Black and Blue
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Inspired by FrankieFandom's 'Just an Accident'. Some secrets are taken to the grave. Some secrets take you to the grave. Matt Casey is walking a fine line between the two, and Kelly Severide is the only person who knows about it. To save his best friend's life, he reaches out to an unlikely source for help.
1. Chapter 1

Black and Blue

A/N: This story was inspired by FrankieFandom's "Just an Accident". Hope you all enjoy, please read and review!

Kelly Severide marched into the 21st District and went over to the front desk where Trudy Platt was working.

"Something I can do for you, Severide?" she asked in her usual 'don't care' tone typically reserved for people she thought were wasting her time.

"Is Voight in?" Kelly asked.

"What's it to you?"

"I need to talk to him."

"What about?"

"I just need to talk to him," Kelly said, "is he in?"

Trudy sighed exasperatedly and responded, "One minute," and buzzed upstairs.

A couple minutes later Voight came down and looked surprised at who was standing by the front desk.

"What're you doing here, Severide?" he asked.

Kelly walked over to him and said, "I need to talk to you."

"Okay..."

"Not here," Kelly said, glancing around at all the other people that might overhear.

Voight seemed to get it and he told Severide, "Alright, come on upstairs, we'll talk in my office."

They headed up to the bullpen, Kelly looked around at the desks for any sign of Antonio, he didn't see him, and he heaved a sigh of relief at that.

Voight closed the door to his office behind Kelly and had him take a seat.

"So what's on your mind?" he asked as he sat down in the chair behind his desk.

Kelly looked at the Intelligence sergeant and suddenly lost the nerve he had to say what it was he'd come there for. He knew this wouldn't be easy, but just opening the door was harder than he thought it would be.

"Severide?"

Kelly blinked. Too late to back out, he had to say something. "It's about Matt Casey."

" _What_ about Matt Casey?" Voight asked, not sure where this was going.

Severide paused as he took in a breath. Then he jumped in. "Gabby Dawson is beating the crap out of him."

"What?" Voight asked.

The cat was out of the bag, Severide wasn't sure he'd done the right thing, but he couldn't stay quiet about it any longer. "She's..." he squeezed his eyes shut for a second, the actual words just seemed too weird even though he knew it was the truth. "She's abusing him."

Voight looked at him with no readable emotion on his face. Severide was starting to think he'd made a mistake by disclosing this. Finally Hank replied with, "He told you?"

Kelly shook his head. "He would never admit to something like that."

"You saw it then?"

"No...but I know she is."

"How?" Voight asked.

Kelly reached in his pocket, took out his phone, and scrolled through some pictures, and handed it over to Voight. He watched as the sergeant sat up straighter in his chair to look at them, and saw him absently raise a hand to his mouth in silent horror as the facts started to weigh in on him. Voight grunted under his breath and closed his eyes at one in particular.

"He knows you took these?" Hank asked as he gave Severide back his phone.

"No," Kelly answered.

"That's a problem, Kelly."

"I know...but it's still proof."

"With nothing to corroborate this, it doesn't matter what you know, we can't _prove_ anything to a prosecutor, the States Attorney, you can forget about a jury..."

"Hank, there's got to be _something_ you can do, right?" Severide asked desperately. "We can't just stand by and do nothing."

"How long have you been getting these pictures?" Voight asked.

Kelly got quiet for a minute. "Three months."

"And nothing came of it?" Hank asked.

"Casey won't talk about it, he gets defensive if I try asking...Gabby sure as hell isn't going to talk about it. She's smart, she doesn't hit him in the face, that would be a dead giveaway, she's mainly targeting the places nobody sees regularly."

"And this was what, some random accident?" Voight asked.

Now Severide got defensive. "Do you know what all happens to firefighters on a call? If we're not in the hospital full of smoke or something broken, we walk away black and blue all the time...if you just see it in passing it's easy to not think about it, it's only if you look at them up close and personal you start to realize these are _not_ work related injuries, not the same thing whatsoever."

"Okay," Hank nodded, "does anybody else know?"

"I don't think so," Kelly admitted. "Nobody's letting on if they do..."

"And you've never witnessed her hurting him personally, correct?"

Kelly shook his head. "She must be doing it when they go home after shift, she'd know better than to try it in the firehouse, too many witnesses."

Voight nodded again. "Has Matt Casey said _anything_ to you that indicates what's going on?"

"No...I've tried getting in there to find out...I've stayed at their place for a couple nights, figuring maybe I'd hear or see something...but as long as someone else is in the apartment, Gabby acts like everything's normal."

"But you suspect everything is _not_ normal."

"I _know_ it isn't. Casey's distant, he's defensive, a few times when we're sleeping in our quarters he's woken up screaming...we had all these plans and he just started bailing on everything...I think...I know it doesn't make any sense, I know it sounds crazy."

"Yes it does...which is exactly why abuse keeps happening," Voight said.

Kelly picked his head up a little higher. "Then you believe me?"

" _Something_ obviously happened to Casey," Voight said, "now what's this theory you've got?"

"I know a little about how domestic violence works, they isolate the other person from friends, family, anybody that might tell them to get out."

"Uh huh," Voight replied.

"I think she's trying to isolate him from the rest of us off-shift," Kelly said, "it doesn't matter what night I call or go over, it's not a good time, they're too busy, most times I can't even get in the door. Something is _definitely_ wrong, Hank...and I can't believe Gabby could actually be capable of this, we've known her for years...I _thought_ we knew her..."

Voight looked at him and must've realized there was more going on than just what met the eye.

"What is it, Kelly?" he asked.

Severide closed his eyes and huffed, then looked at Voight and admitted, "I've been wrong about people before, my _own_ people."

Voight nodded. "Kevin Hadley."

Kelly's eyes widened. "You know about that?"

"It _is_ a matter of public record," Voight pointed out.

Kelly shook his head, "I couldn't be _that_ off about someone else at 51..." he sighed, "at least I didn't think I could. It doesn't make sense, Gabby Dawson is not..."

"People aren't always what they seem, Kelly," Voight pointed out.

"But I _know_ her."

"How well?"

"I've known her for almost 10 years."

"How personally do you know her?"

"I..." he sighed, "I don't know."

"Is there something else?" Voight asked.

Severide didn't answer, he just sat there with a blank look in his eyes.

"Kelly?"

"I'm scared for him," he admitted to Voight. "I'm scared what's going to happen to him if something doesn't change. Gabby's a paramedic, she has more medical knowledge and training than the average person, so she _knows_ what it can take to kill a person and how easily it can be done, if she really got mad at him she could use her EMT training to murder him."

"That's a little extreme," Voight tried to get him to calm down.

"But it's not impossible."

"No, it's not," Voight agreed.

"And _being_ a paramedic...it would explain why there'd be no hospital report, if she hurts him, he'd be too embarrassed to go, and she could probably treat it herself...it's a perfect trap to make sure nobody finds out," Kelly said.

Voight nodded. "I know. So just to recap, we've got no complaining victim, no eyewitness who actually saw the abuse, no outcry witness who heard the abuse, no admission, no victim's statement, no hospital records, no police reports, and nobody else thinks there's a problem."

Kelly closed his eyes and sank down in his chair, dreading what Voight was going to say next.

"It's a rock and a hard place, Kelly," Voight told him. "The only way we can proceed as is is off the books, and if we do that, it would take a miracle to piece it all together to actually take it to a States Attorney."

That didn't quite sound like a no. Kelly opened his eyes and looked at Hank hopefully and asked, "And?"

"You're all still working the same shifts, right?"

Kelly nodded. "Yeah."

"Next one's tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"Alright...while they're out, somebody's going to get into the apartment and plant a camera, we'll see what we can pick up. If we can get video evidence of Gabby assaulting Casey, then we'll move in."

Kelly nodded, desperate for anything to work. "How will you make it stick?"

"I'll deal with that when it happens," Voight told him. He stood up, Kelly stood up, and Voight reached across the desk to shake his hand. "Kelly, thank you for coming in, we're going to figure this out. Casey's very lucky to have you for a friend."

"If he was so lucky I would've done something myself already," Severide responded.

"Hey, it's hard, you can't help somebody if they don't want help and you can't force them to leave, that's why it's nearly impossible to help most victims even though we have the resources and knowhow," Voight said. "Now, we can't force Casey to get away from Gabby, but we're going to _help_ make it happen."

Kelly felt his eyes stinging. "Thank you, Hank."

"Just keep your cool, and don't let on that you know anything," Voight warned him. "We'll take it from here, so when you're working together tomorrow, don't go all 'Kelly Severide' on this. Maybe you don't realize it but your reputation as a shortsighted hothead precedes you."

In light of the situation, that brought a small smile to Kelly's face. Voight assured him, "Casey's gonna be okay, we're going to get him out of this."

Something came to Severide and his eyes shifted to a look of panic as he started to say, "Antonio..."

"Antonio's going to be benched on this assignment, he just doesn't know it," Voight told him.

"He'll _never_ believe it," Kelly said.

"I know," Voight replied, "nobody wants to think their own family can be capable of something so horrible. Don't you worry about him."

"But how're you..."

"You let me worry about that," Voight told him. "You just go back and act like everything's normal."

"How?"

"You've been doing it for three months already," Voight said, "you can manage two more days."

Kelly nodded without a word, he knew Voight was right, he knew he had to keep his cool and not blow it now. He and Voight left the office, and Kelly felt his heart pulsating when he saw Antonio in the bullpen.

"I want to thank you for coming in," Voight told him, and Kelly slowly realized he was saying it for everyone else's benefit, "we'll look into this."

Kelly turned back towards him and stiffly nodded, going along with it, "Okay, thanks." And with that he walked past the others and headed for the stairs.

"What's Severide doing here?" Antonio asked.

"Aside from asking when Erin's coming back? They got called to a crack house during last shift, place burnt to the ground, he thought it might tie in to one of our open investigations we're working with Narcotics on," Voight said, and shrugged, "it's a long shot but I told him we'd check it out."

* * *

"Are we actually doing this?" Jay asked Alvin two days later as they sat in a van half a block from Casey's apartment, watching the camera feed and listening to the audio as Matt and Gabby went about their day. The camera had been set up in the living room and covered a good amount of the apartment, leaving the bathroom and bedroom out of the shot to maintain some privacy for the unsuspecting couple.

"We're here, ain't we?" Olinsky replied as he bit into his sandwich.

"This just doesn't make any sense, Dawson's little sister abusing her husband, a firefighter?"

"I'm warning you, Jay, you start on about he can take her, I'm gonna kick your ass," Alvin told him.

"I wasn't going to say that," Halstead replied.

"Good."

"It just seems unreal, the whole thing does...we're investigating Antonio's sister and leaving him in the dark about this?"

"You know the protocol about that, Antonio can't be involved _because_ it's his sister."

"Still, don't we at least owe him the truth?"

"The truth is if she's beating the crap out of Casey, we're going to see it sooner or later, and if that happens, the truth is he's going to have to find a way to deal with it," Alvin said, "until then we're not having him fly off the handle and jeopardize the case by warning her what we're doing."

"But I mean..." Jay shook his head, "how much are we actually going to watch? If they start getting freaky on the couch, I don't need to see that, you know?"

"It wouldn't be a problem if you hadn't slept with her," Alvin said.

Jay looked at him. "How'd you know about that?"

Without missing a beat, Alvin answered, "They don't call us Intelligence for nothing." And with that he took another bite of his sandwich.

Voight's voice came through on the radio. "Anything yet, Jay?"

"Negative," Halstead watched the screen, "they're not in view...I can't even hear them right now. Boss, how long're we going to stay here watching?"

"Until something happens," Voight answered, "as soon as anything does, we move in."

"Copy that," Halstead responded.

"I still can't believe it," he told Olinsky, "Gabby Dawson an abusive wife? It doesn't click."

"Name one time it _does_ click," Alvin responded.

"We've seen them, crack heads, psychos, all the things she is _not_."

"Yeah that's why we're in this business, right? Because all the criminals walk around with a big neon sign so you know who they are just by looking at them, right?" Al returned. "Think back, how many times a clean cut person been the brains behind a trafficking ring or a family massacre?"

"I know, I know," Jay replied, "but this is different, this is Gabby, this is Antonio's sister, it's practically one of our own."

"That doesn't make her immune," Al told him, "Anymore than Casey being a man and a firefighter makes _him_ immune from what's going on."

"Yeah, I guess...Al? Have you ever actually seen a guy get beat up by a woman?"

"In general? Yeah. His own wife or girlfriend...yeah, they cut deeper because it _is_ personal."

Jay shook his head. "I don't get it...how could a guy just stand there and take it?"

"What's he gonna do, slap the crap out of her to make it stop?" Al asked.

"Come on, he could walk away, he could restrain her."

"Maybe, _maybe_ he could, maybe she's got a knife, he grabs her she cuts him, maybe he grabs her and she knees him in the balls, who's going to be more vulnerable then? What's she going to do when he's on the floor moaning?" Al replied.

"Point taken," Jay said with an uncomfortable look on his face.

There was sound coming from the camera now, Jay watched the monitor, Gabby and Casey were still out of sight but he could hear them arguing.

"Don't you _dare_ walk away from me, Matt Casey!" Gabby's voice rang through the room, "We're not done talking."

" _We_ are not talking," Casey said as he came into the picture, "you never listen to me. So you can talk to yourself."

"Where do you think you're going?" she entered the living room.

"I'm going out before I do something I regret, we both need to cool off," Matt told her.

"Cool off?" she said mockingly, "Is that what you said to me?"

Jay reached for his radio and told Voight, "I think it's about to go down, Boss, they just started screaming at each other."

Voight's voice came back and told the others, "Everybody hold your position and get ready."

"Copy that, Sarge," Atwater's voice came over the radio.

Jay and Alvin sat by, ready to move at a moment's notice, and tensely watched the situation in Casey's apartment quickly escalate. On the video they could see both the Truck lieutenant and the paramedic getting in each other's faces screaming at each other, and though Jay wouldn't say anything, he felt proud of Casey for holding his own in the argument. What he was seeing now was definitely _nothing_ like the Gabby he knew when he was working undercover at Molly's and it was very difficult for him to watch.

"I'm sick of this!" Casey told her, actually lunging in her face, "it's obvious you don't respect me."

" _Respect_?" Gabby repeated in a disbelieving tone. "You want to talk respect?"

Gabby's voice hit a screeching decibel in the same instant that she hit him in the face, the sound erupting through the apartment like a gunshot, followed immediately by Casey falling on his knees with a hand pressed to his cheek and a moan of pain escaping him.

"That's it, everybody move!" Jay hollered into his radio.

He and Olinsky hopped out of the van, Voight was already out of his car and storming up to the door, Ruzek and Atwater were running up from the corner. On the porch the screams coming from inside the apartment were easily heard through the door, now it sounded like somebody was being murdered.

Voight kicked the door open and entered with his gun drawn, the others piled in behind him.

"Chicago P.D., get your hands up!"

There was no way to tell what had happened in those few seconds between what Jay and Al saw on the monitor, to what they were seeing now, but it was obvious that something bad had happened. There was a shattered vase on the floor a few inches from Casey, who was face down on the floor with his arms over his head as if fending off another blow, some of his blood staining the carpet, and Gabby stood a couple feet from him with a kitchen knife in hand, and a deer in headlights look on her face at the intruders who suddenly stormed the apartment.

"Gabby, put the knife down and get your ass on the ground," Voight warned her.

"What the hell?" she demanded to know as she tossed the knife. "What're you doing here?"

Voight's attention instead was drawn to the fact that Casey hadn't moved from where he crumpled on the floor.

"Take her," he called over to Olinsky as he pocketed his sidearm and moved over to Matt.

"Gabriela Dawson, you are under arrest for assault and battery, put your hands behind your back and turn around."

"Is this some kind of joke?" she asked.

"You see anybody laughing?"

Voight crouched down on the floor beside Casey and pressed a hand against his shoulder. "Matt...Matt..." Voight rolled him over, Casey's eyes were all but closed and a low guttural moan was the only sound emitting from somewhere in his throat.

"What the hell did you do, Gabby?" he asked as he lowered Casey's arms and felt around Casey's scalp for any cuts or contusions.

"What's wrong?" Jay asked.

Voight reached for his radio and told Jay, "Try and make him respond." He said into the radio, "This is Sergeant Hank Voight, Chicago P.D., roll an ambo immediately to 911-"

The room was a tornado of mass confusion between everybody talking as they tried to assess the situation, Gabby screaming and struggling as Atwater had to help Olinsky get her handcuffed, Alvin nonchalantly continuing to read her her rights, and everybody wondering what the hell had just happened? Jay pressed a thumb against one of Casey's eyelids and raised to to look at his eye. It was responsive to the light, he tried to squeeze his eye shut under the pressure of the thumb holding it open, but other than that there was nothing.

"Casey can you hear me? Casey?"

There was nothing.

* * *

Voight had gone with Casey to the hospital, and before the ambo took off he'd stressed to the paramedics not taking Casey to Chicago Med, unless he was going to die in the extra time it would take, they were to rush him to Lakeshore. Not as many people there knew Casey anymore, there'd be a lot fewer questions asked, and assuming Casey would recover from whatever had happened to him, Voight knew he'd appreciate not making what happened to him the business of everybody he knew and saw on a regular basis at Med. During the ambulance ride, they were halfway to the hospital when Casey stirred on the gurney, then turned to the side and threw up, just missing hitting the paramedic who was working on him.

"What's happening?" Voight wanted to know.

"Possible concussion," the paramedic answered.

Voight looked at Casey and saw blood was slowly trickling out of his mouth and down his chin.

"What's _that_?"

The paramedic forced Casey's mouth open to take a look, then concluded, "Busted lip."

"That from the attack too?"

"Could be, hard to say."

Voight hollered to the front seat, "How much longer?"

"We'll be there in five."

Voight grunted to himself as he reached in his pocket, took out his phone, and dialed a number.

"Kelly...we got him...EMS is taking him to Lakeshore...his condition?" he looked down at Casey and answered, "We'll know better when you get over there."


	2. Chapter 2

Casey's head hurt and felt like it was swimming. He heard voices, he thought someone was talking to him but he wasn't sure. He realized his eyes were closed and tried to open them, they were too heavy, he rested a while, then tried again, the light was bright and hurt his eyes, he closed them again, but he was able to see people standing over him. Who? Where had they come from? What was the last thing he remembered? He tried to think back but his mind was coming up blank. He heard somebody counting, and felt his whole body being jerked, somebody had grabbed him and was moving him. He heard the voices continuing, he heard strange but familial beeping sounds, he felt somebody forcing his eyelid open and shining a light in it. He wanted to kill whoever was doing it but he felt like he couldn't get his arms to work to reach up and choke the person. That eyelid snapped shut, then the other was forced open, and the light was shone into it too. He felt his left arm moving slightly, but couldn't get it up high enough to stop whoever was doing that. Somebody was calling his name. Then he felt somebody jerk on his shirt, and he heard a strange ripping noise, then he was cold, then he felt strange things touching his body. He wanted it to stop, he wanted everybody to go away and leave him alone, he wanted to lash out and hit everyone that was touching him, irritating him, and making his head pound with every word they said. He wanted it all to stop.

Then it came back to him. He and Gabby arguing, Gabby screaming at him, Gabby hitting him, he was on the floor, she hit him again, _something_ hit him, he couldn't see, he couldn't get up, he wanted it all to stop. Then what had happened? How had he gotten out of there? Where was Gabby now? What was going on? Where was he? He tried to speak but all he heard was himself making incoherent noises. Somebody, anybody, tell him what was going on, somebody help.

* * *

All hospitals were madhouses in the right moment, Voight had made countless trips to Med over the years and knew the place was regularly a three ring circus, and he wished he was back there now, at least he'd know somebody to talk to to find out what was going on. Casey had been taken to a room where the doctors had briefly examined him, cut off his clothes, revealing all the bruises that covered his body, all of them various colors and in various stages of healing. Some of them were so old they couldn't be used in a court of law as proof of much of anything, others were still new and fresh, some of them were hand shaped, they turned Casey over and there were two sets of bloody claw marks across his back that were a few days old and starting to get infected. There was also a perfect hand shaped bruise across his lower back. What the hell had Gabby done to him? They treated his cuts, then dressed him in a gown, and said somebody would come soon to take him for an MRI scan, that was the last Voight had seen of anyone for half an hour or so.

Two hours later...Severide still hadn't gotten to the hospital yet, he'd called Voight to let him know something unexpected came up, he became an unwitting link in the chain of a multi-car pileup and though he wasn't hurt, he couldn't get out of there until police cleared the scene, which wouldn't happen until they finished taking everybody's statements, and for some reason he got bumped to the end of that line. Casey still hadn't been taken for a head scan, but he had woken up and the weight of everything slowly dawned on him. A nurse stopped by long enough to give him an ice pack to press on the sore spot of his head until somebody could see him, and that had been half an hour ago. Voight stood at the edge of the room with his back against the wall, one foot crossed over the other, his hands thrust in his pockets, and looked at Casey as the lieutenant sat up in the hospital bed and pressed the ice pack against the side of his head all the while he held his head down and sobbed as he started to realize what had happened, and realized that now everybody knew and he couldn't hide it anymore.

After a while Hank finally asked him, "How long has this been going on, Matt?"

Casey's chest started heaving at twice the speed it was before, as every breath that entered his body came out twice as quick in another choking sob.

Voight went over to the bed and placed his hand over the one Casey was holding the ice pack with. "I'll get this, take it easy." Casey slowly let go of the pack and lowered his arm as Voight turned the ice pack around and pressed the side that was still hard and cold against his head.

"You really don't have to tell me anything, Matt, we'll get it figured out soon enough," Voight told him.

Casey tried to pull himself together long enough to ask Voight, "Who-who told you?"

"That's not important," Voight replied, "what does is that you're safe now, she can't hurt you again."

Casey groaned and cupped his hands over his face as it all started to hit him.

"Casey, look at me, _look-at-me_ ," Voight told him, and waited until he saw Casey just barely turn his head to see him through the corner of his eye. "What happened is not your fault, you know that, right?"

Casey seemed to calm down slightly, and tearfully replied, "Yes it is."

Voight looked at him and shook his head. "Why would you say that?"

Casey looked at him, his face a mask of both horror and shame, as he admitted, "Because I hit her back one time."

"What do you mean one time?" Voight asked.

Casey forced back the tears that were tightening his throat, and told the sergeant, "One time when we were fighting, she slapped me...I got mad and slapped her back thinking she'd stop, she...she..."

"She what?"

The tears started to come again as Casey lowered his head and felt along the side of it. Voight pushed Casey's short hair back and was able to make out a distinctive bruise that hadn't healed yet.

"Oh God, Matt."

"She picked up a bowl from the table...and she swung it...everything went white after that...I couldn't see...it hurt so much..."

There was more but Casey couldn't speak now, though Voight had a pretty good idea what happened after that. Given he blamed himself for what happened, Hank could very easily picture Gabby saying to him what batterers had always told their victims since the beginning of time, 'Look what you _made_ me do'.

Casey was out and out sobbing again by this point, Voight placed a hand on Casey's back in one of the few places he knew Matt didn't have any bruises, and softly rubbed it in circles.

"Casey," Voight knew what he was about to say was stuff Casey inherently knew, and he couldn't believe he actually had to remind the lieutenant of this, but he told him, "abuse is about control...alright? It's never about love, it's not about anything you did or _didn't_ do, or should've done...none of this is your fault."

Casey's whole body was shaking as his cries got louder, Voight carefully reached his other arm around Casey and held the trembling lieutenant in a loose hug, whether or not Casey would accept it on account of who was doing it, it was obvious that he needed it, he needed _some_ normal human contact again, and right now Hank was the only person Casey had. How was that for a depressing thought?

"It's going to be okay, Casey," Hank told him, "you're gonna be alright now." He finally pulled away from Casey, took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at a message, and headed over to the door.

"Are you up for any visitors?" Voight asked him.

Casey kept his head down and shook it.

"Well too bad, you got one, and you need to talk to him," Voight opened the door and signaled to somebody outside, "You can come in now."

Casey looked up and saw Kelly enter the room, looking like he was about to crawl out of his skin, looking almost like he felt. Severide crossed over to the bed in two large steps and just about collapsed as he bent down and hugged Casey.

Kelly's voice was choked with tears that tightened his throat, "Oh my God, Casey."

Casey was bawling as soon as he opened his mouth, it was impossible for him to talk. Severide squeezed his arms around Casey's back and almost deliriously kissed Matt on his cheek, then his forehead, then he raised one hand to cup the back of Casey's head and felt as well as heard Casey gasp against him, then he felt somebody grabbing him and opened his eyes and saw Voight peeling his fingers back until he no longer had a grip on Casey.

Voight simply said, in a notably softer voice than usual, "Don't, don't touch his head, they're going to check him for a concussion."

Kelly was too emotionally drained to argue even if he wanted to. He wrapped both arms around Casey's back again and kissed him on the cheek again, and again, and again...he'd been about to hit the ceiling since they went off shift, waiting to see what happened, then waiting to get to the hospital to find out what Casey's condition was. The things he'd seen over the past few months had him seriously worried that one day Gabby was just going to go too far and kill Matt, whether she intended to or not, and he'd woken up screaming in the night plenty of times from all too real nightmares where just that happened, every time it was something different: blunt force trauma right where the beam had fractured his skull, stabbed to death with a kitchen knife, an air embolism from a hypodermic needle, a major artery or vein lacerated from anything sharp that just happened to be laying around the apartment, his broken body laying at the bottom of a tall flight of stairs, set on fire while he slept. Knowing that those threats were no longer viable, Severide was so overwhelmed with relief he didn't know what to do, he felt like he was going to lose his mind. He didn't realize when it happened but he became aware of Casey's head pressed against his shoulder and the vibrations shaking him as Casey sobbed continually as he reached his arms behind Kelly's back and hugged him in return. Kelly felt the tears pouring from his own eyes and knew he was just as hysterical as Casey was.

Voight watched the two lieutenants as they clung to each other and cried, both for different reasons no doubt, damn if they weren't like a pair of fraternal twins though. The brotherhood that existed between them was evident, not the same one that applied to all firefighters, these two were as close to the real biological thing as it came. Much as he hated to leave before he saw what happened next, Hank had business to tend to, and now that Severide was here and there would be somebody with Casey in his absence, he quietly left the room and closed the door behind him.

After a few minutes, Casey was able to calm down enough to pull back from Severide and ask him, " _Y-you_ told Voight?"

Severide was past the point of caring if Casey got mad at him for that or not, he was just so grateful that Casey was alive and he would be okay. He composed himself long enough to tell Matt, "You're gonna be alright, Casey, it's over, it's all over." He pulled Casey against him again and lightly forced Casey to rest his head on his shoulder.

Nothing made sense to Casey, and even in his foggy state of mind he didn't think it was just because of his concussion. He clung to Severide as he cluelessly tried to put it together. He had been so careful to make sure nobody knew what had been going on. He had been too horrified to let anybody know what was going on.

"How?" he tearfully asked as he lifted his head. "How did you know? How did you find out?"


	3. Chapter 3

Gabby had been pacing around the interrogation room and by the time Voight entered, carrying a manila folder, she was furious. She turned to the Intelligence sergeant and demanded to know, "Hank, what the hell is going on? Why am I here?"

"You don't know?" Voight asked.

Her expression said plenty. Voight closed the door and said to her, "Let me see if I got this straight...your husband had a building collapse on him, had his skull fractured, had a couple holes drilled into his skull, had to relearn how to do everything in a course of six weeks before he could return to work, by which time he was still having lapses in time and memory...and _you_ don't remember what happened?"

"What the hell were you doing at our apartment?" Gabby asked, "Who do you think you are?"

"You know what, I'd ask you the same thing, but right now I don't think even _you_ know," Voight said, "sit down."

"I am not-"

"SIT!" Voight put everything in that one word, more than everything he'd thrown at Casey all those years ago in that diner when he cut Matt off midsentence screaming "I'M NOT ASKING!", and it worked, Gabby quickly sat in the chair across from his at the table. Voight sat in the other chair and set the folder on the table.

"You and I, we've had a few encounters over the years," Voight told her, "you come to see me, the guy that tried to have your boyfriend killed, to help your brother...while I'm sitting in prison for trying to have Casey whacked...you either gotta be damn stupid or have some real balls to try something like that...I was never sure which one it was with you."

Gabby's expression quickly changed from total confusion to a stink-face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Why don't you tell me?" Voight asked. "Why don't you tell me about the first time you beat the piss out of Casey? What'd he do? He hurt your feelings so you beat the hell out of him? Is that how it works?"

"Hank, what're you talking about?" she asked.

"Come on, Gabby, everybody saw what they saw, Casey was on the floor bleeding and you had a knife, you really gonna say he hit you first and it was self defense?" Voight asked.

"You're crazy, you know that, Hank?" Gabby asked. "We had an argument, married people argue."

"Sure they do," Voight crossed his arms against his chest and leaned back in his chair, "My wife and I had arguments all the time, none of which involved one of us using the other as a punching bag."

"You are making too much out of this," Gabby told him, so far absolutely nothing in her voice her or tone indicating that she was even aware of what was going on.

"Am I?" Voight asked.

"Why were you spying on us anyway?" Gabby asked. "Your life's that empty you have nothing better to do than to harass us?"

Voight maintained his typical stone-faced expression, and equally unchanging tone, and replied, "Oh believe me, it don't matter what I've got going on...I always take time out to check out people's concerns that somebody they love is being abused."

Gabby cluelessly shifted her eyes from one side of her head to the other as she looked around the room, and laughed like he'd just told some big joke. "Who said anything about abuse?"

"You want to know? You really want to know who?" Voight asked.

"Yes!" Gabby insisted.

"Your pal, Severide."

Gabby struggled to form any words a couple of times, her face took on all the telltale micro-expressions of confusion, the eyebrows furrowed together, the jaw dropped, lines formed around the questioning mouth, the eyes changed like a switch being thrown. "What? That's crazy, Severide would never-"

"You underestimate him, that's your problem," Voight said.

"Oh _please_ ," Gabby deflected, "where would Severide get such a stupid idea?"

"Hmm, I wonder," Voight said as he flipped the folder open, took out several pictures, and laid them out on the table for her to see.

Gabby looked down at the photographs curiously. There were several of them. Her face started to change again, now, a hint of worry, as she said, "Those weren't taken at the hospital."

"No, they weren't," Voight replied. "Kelly's been taking them for the past few months in the locker room at the fire house, he knew it wasn't enough to get an arrest warrant, but he knew it made a neat pile of circumstantial evidence that establishes a pattern of violence."

The pictures were from different angles, different lighting, clearly they hadn't all been taken together. One showed Casey's back with bright red hand prints across it. Another zoomed in on purple marks on his biceps that indicated somebody had grabbed him with enough force to bruise the flesh. A profile shot showed Casey in a towel, his ribs an assortment of red and purple marks. Another depicted Casey at his locker wrapping gauze around his upper arm, figuring nobody had seen him and nobody knew. The large cut on his arm showed through the thin first layer of gauze he'd gotten on. Another one, nobody knew how Kelly got it, was actually taken _in_ the shower stall at 51, the curtain obstructed part of the view but the sight of Casey sitting on his knees on the shower floor with his back to the camera, and a mishmash of black and blue bruises going up and down from his butt to his neck, made a particularly stomach churning sight. And if that wasn't enough...one that was so unlike the others, at first it didn't seem to fit. Casey, fully dressed, on the floor beside the sinks in the bathroom, unconscious, blood coming out of his nose, which had trailed down his face, his shirt, and made a nice sized pool on the floor. The offwhite sink itself looked like a crime scene with blood spattered all across it _and_ the countertop.

"Apparently _this_ is where Kelly first got suspicious," Voight pointed to the last photo. "When Casey came to he couldn't explain what had happened."

But it was obvious Gabby was not going to take responsibility for any of it any time soon. She looked back up at Voight, and tried to laugh it off and said, "Matt is a clumsy man."

"Stop," Voight said simply and firmly. "Don't embarrass yourself, and don't insult me."

From somewhere, Voight pulled out a large stack of papers and slammed them on the table, it looked like a phone book.

"What's that?" Gabby asked.

"Casey's performance record from the last 15 years in the CFD," Voight said, "Every incident report he ever wrote up, every commendation, every medal, every testimony he ever provided in court, you _really_ expect anybody to believe a man capable of excelling like this under the pressure of fires and poison gas and explosions and car crashes...is so accident prone he's tripping himself black and blue? Who do you think is going to believe that?"

Gabby calmly switched tactics. "Matt's a hothead, he gets into fights."

" _Stop_ ," Voight repeated. "Maybe you don't remember so good. I had two goons beat the crap out of him when we first met, and he _still_ looked better than this."

Voight looked at her and told her, "You want to play games, you want to waste my time, that's fine, I got all the time in the world, but until you tell the truth and explain why you beat up Casey, you're not leaving this room."

"You can't do that!" she yelled at him.

"Oh no? Watch me," Voight said. "You want to try again?"

* * *

"What the hell do you mean you arrested Gabby?" Antonio had stormed into the 21st District looking ready to murder someone. He looked like he'd just gotten out of bed and was only slightly more lucid, how he'd even gotten there in one piece was beyond Olinsky and Ruzek.

"You gotta calm down, man, you don't know what happened," Adam told him.

"You arrested my _sister_! What the hell is there to know? Has everybody around here lost their damn minds?"

"Hey," Alvin warned him, "tone it down before I knock you on your ass, bro. Now how did you find out she got arrested?"

"One of the neighbors called, said there were cops and an ambulance at the apartment, thought somebody got killed. Where is she? In the cage? I'm taking her home and I'm kicking everybody's ass," he told them.

"Hey!" Olinsky looked him dead in the eyes, "Sit down and shut up, man."

"Antonio, your sister done lost it," Atwater told Dawson. "She tried to kill Casey tonight."

"What?" he asked with a completely clueless look on his face.

" _That's_ why she was arrested," Ruzek explained, "she was about to shank him when we busted down the door."

"Who-wha-no, that doesn't make any sense."

"You're telling us," Kevin said. He turned to Ruzek and told him, "Get the video up."

"What video?" Antonio wanted to know. "What're you talking about?"

"We bugged their apartment, we were watching it tonight when she attacked Matt Casey," Ruzek explained as he went over to his desk.

"You _what_? What the hell did you bug her apartment for?" Antonio asked.

"Because somebody came in and reported she was beating the crap out of her husband, that's what for, genius," Alvin told him.

Antonio shook his head, "That's impossible, she would never-"

"You might want to see this before you finish that sentence," Kevin told him.

"See what?" Antonio asked as he went over to Ruzek's desk.

The four cops watched the video playback on Ruzek's laptop, starting when Casey and Gabby started arguing.

"As soon as she hit him we ran in, nobody saw what happened after that until we got back here a little while ago," Ruzek told Antonio.

The sound of Gabby's high pitched scream and the deafening sound of her hand hitting Casey in the face filled the bullpen as everybody watched in disgust, though for Antonio it was an all new horror.

And now everybody got to see what happened while they had been moving in to bust Gabby. Once Casey was on his knees on the floor, Gabby went off on him and started screaming obscenities at him, slapping him with both hands, then switched to hitting him in the head. Casey tried to block the blows and on the audio he could be heard yelping in pain and begging, _"Gabby, stop! My head!"_ She hit him once in the back of the head particularly hard and that's when he went down. Gabby was still screaming like a banshee as she picked up a vase off the table, but it slipped out of her hand before she could hit him with it and it shattered on the floor beside him, she grabbed something else off the table, a knife, and that was when the door busted open.

 _"Chicago P.D., get your hands up! Gabby, put the knife down and get your ass on the ground!"_ Voight was screaming at her with his gun drawn.

The whole transaction had taken place in less than 30 seconds.

Antonio stood by the desk with wide eyes, unable to say a word, finally he managed to croak out, "Stop...shut it off..."

"You were saying something?" Alvin asked in a lowkey tone.

Antonio raised a hand to his mouth as he still stared at the screen in horror.

"That's impossible," he said, "it can't be."

"Sorry, bro, but it was," Kevin told him, "it took two of us to handcuff her."

"Wh-where's Casey now?"

"Voight went with him to Lakeshore," Ruzek answered. "He was unconscious when they rolled him out in the ambo."

"Oh my God," Antonio choked out. "I don't get it...that's not...that's not Gabby...he, he had to have done something-"

"What the hell could he do to justify that?" Atwater asked, understanding why Antonio couldn't accept what he saw, but refusing to let him drag Casey through the dirt because of it.

"Who...who reported it?" Antonio thought to ask.

"Kelly Severide," Ruzek clicked off the video but brought up the pictures from Severide's phone, "he got these at the firehouse without Casey knowing."

Antonio looked at the various shots of the bruises and cuts on Casey's body, and he closed his eyes, trying to suppress what he'd just seen.

"How..." he swallowed as he felt his stomach churning, "how long has this..."

"Severide first got suspicious three months back when Casey started turning up fifty shades of black and blue," Alvin answered, "past that we have no idea."

"Oh God..." Antonio groaned.

He was going to be sick.


	4. Chapter 4

Casey didn't remember falling asleep, but he realized he was in a bed somewhere, then bits and pieces started to come back to him.

"Kelly?" he groggily asked as he opened his eyes. But Severide wasn't there. Casey turned to look around, Voight was there.

"Where's Kelly?" Casey wanted to know.

"He had to take a breather, don't worry, he'll be right back," Voight told him.

Casey tried to remember the last thing that happened before he fell asleep, but it was all muddled together.

"The scan?"

"They already did it, came back good," Voight assured him, "doc said you got a minor concussion, nothing to worry about."

Casey groaned, "I kind of figured, I feel like I'm gonna puke."

"You already did that on the ride over," Voight told him.

"Where's Gabby?" he asked suddenly.

Voight looked at him. "You don't have to worry about that, she's not going to hurt you again."

"Where is she?"

"Matt, don't tell me you still love her."

"It's not her fault," Casey looked down at the blanket covering his legs. Even though his voice was strong enough to make his conviction seem firm, he couldn't look Voight in the eyes as he said it.

"Matt, you didn't do anything to cause what she did to you," Voight said, "now that only leaves _one_ person responsible."

"It's not her fault," Casey repeated, this time looking up at him.

"I know you want to believe that."

"Something _has_ to be wrong, there has to be some explanation...she was never like this..."

"When did it start?" Voight asked him.

Casey stopped, and looked straight ahead.

"Matt..."

"I don't know," Casey replied, feeling his eyes starting to sting again.

"Matt, you can't keep making excuses for her."

"I'm not making excuses...it's not her fault."

Voight looked at him and didn't say anything, but the wheels in his head were definitely turning.

The wheels in Casey's head however seemed to be skidding to a stop. His eyelids grew heavy and he laid back against the pillow and closed his eyes.

Casey didn't know how much time had passed, but the otherwise quiet of the room suddenly came to a screeching halt as he heard Voight address somebody, "What the hell are you doing here? You can't be in here."

The next thing he heard was Antonio's voice. "I gotta talk to him."

"Get out, Antonio," Voight warned him.

Casey forced his eyes open and sat up as he watched the two Intelligence cops arguing with each other, Antonio trying to get past the door and Voight about ready to throw him out.

"Hank...Hank!" Casey strained his vocal cords to be head over both of them arguing. Both cops turned and looked at him. Casey told Voight in a weak and tired voice, "It's alright, let him in."

Voight reluctantly stepped back and allowed Antonio into the room. Antonio looked like a zombie, he stumbled over to the bed and just about fell on Casey as his voice broke, "I'm sorry, man, I'm so sorry, I didn't know."

Voight stood back and watched curiously as Antonio and his brother-in-law threw their arms around one another and both broke down crying, all the while Antonio continued to try and apologize for not knowing what was going on. Hank couldn't be sure, but at one point, as Antonio futilely tried to speak but any and all words instead came out as high pitched sobs, it almost sounded like he tried to say to Casey, "Why didn't you tell me?"

After a few tense minutes both men started to calm down and each pulled away from the other. Voight went over to Antonio, clapped a hand on his back and told him, "Wait for me outside." He waited until Antonio was gone, then he closed the door and asked Casey, "What happened with Antonio, Casey?"

Casey's face was streaked with tears but his voice was strong enough as he shook his head and responded, "It doesn't matter. It's not important."

"Yeah, well Antonio doesn't seem to think so," Voight pointed out, and asked, "What did he do to you, Casey?"

Casey shook his head and looked over to the wall.

"Back when Gabby had the idea of adopting Louie, she wanted me to be on board with her, wanted us to be a team, one big happy family...I thought she was rushing into things too fast, so she decided to move out and be a single mom and do it all on her own. Somehow Antonio found out...he came into my quarters at the firehouse and started screaming at me for _forcing_ her to go it alone and not being there for her."

Voight looked at him for a few seconds before he finally responded, "Huh?"

Hearing the Intelligence sergeant being at a total loss of what was going on brought a small smirk to Casey's face, then it faded as he replied, "It never occurred to him to find out what was really going on. As soon as he thought I was being mean to his little sister, he went on the defensive."

Voight grunted as he took in that new information.

"Hank...don't go after him for this, it's not his fault."

"Matt you have _got_ to stop defending everyone, you know that?" Voight responded.

"He didn't know," Matt said, there was a pause, and his voice started to choke as he added, "nobody knew."

Voight nodded, "I know. That's why stuff like this happens, people like Gabby are charismatic, conniving, they know how to act so people think they're fine."

Casey shook his head. "It just can't be."

"You know it's true, Matt. They know how to act normal so _nobody_ would ever suspect them."

Casey shook his head again. "It just can't be true, it's not her fault."

"You keep saying that, and I wish that were the case. Casey, you didn't do anything to make her that way, this isn't on you."

Casey breathed heavily as he struggled with the next thing he was trying to say. "I thought...I thought..."

Voight nodded sympathetically, "I know, you keep thinking you can fix them, they'll change..." he shook his head, "but it doesn't happen, Matt, I'm sorry. I'm a cop, for 30 years I've heard people say 'it's not their fault, I can fix them, I can change them, I just have to try harder, I just have to do better and they'll be fine'. I've heard it thousands of times." He saw Casey slowly shift his gaze over towards the wall to detach from the conversation, Voight took that opportunity to add, "And I've said it hundreds of times over 15 years."

That got Casey's attention, he turned back to Hank and asked, "What?"

"My son, Justin...he went off the rails when he was 15, and I could see there was a problem, but I kept making excuses for him, I kept saying 'it's not his fault, it's not his fault, I can fix it, I can fix him'...you saw how that ended."

"My God," Casey barely got out in a whisper. It had never occurred to him to look at his sordid history with Voight from that perspective.

"There's no shame in wanting to change somebody, Matt, we all do it, but you have to learn that you just can't do it, you can't will them to change, no matter what sacrifices you're willing to make. You just can't change people, they have to make that decision on their own, and if they don't, you have to accept it."

Casey felt tears building up in his eyes again, he just couldn't accept it. "It's not her fault, Hank, it can't be, she didn't use to be like this, there has to be _something_..."

Voight nodded, understanding Casey's reluctance to admit the obvious. "Let me look into it, I'll see if I can find anything, if you're right we might be able to get her help."

Casey felt his throat swollen with tears, he just nodded in agreement.

Kelly came running up from the hall and just about crashed into the door.

"Oh good you're here," Voight said, "you see Antonio?"

"Yeah, what's he doing here?" Kelly demanded to know as he huffed and puffed to catch his breath. He'd passed by Antonio and while the cop gave no indication he'd seen the Squad lieutenant, Kelly was worried that he'd come to have it out with Casey and rushed to his room.

"Where is he?"

Kelly pointed down the corridor.

"Alright, you stay here with Casey, I'll be back later," Voight said as he exited the room.

Voight went down the hall but didn't see Antonio anywhere. He saw the door for the men's room and decided to check it out. Antonio stood in front of the mirror by the sink, looking at his reflection, his eyes looked half dead, he himself barely looked like he was hanging on.

"Antonio," Voight saw his own reflection addressing Dawson's.

Antonio shook his head, his voice choked with tears, "I screwed up."

Voight nodded as he took a step towards the cop. "I know." He reached out and put a hand on Antonio's shoulder, the younger cop all but jumped under the touch.

"Hey, look at me," Voight told him, "It's alright, this doesn't have anything to do with what you did. It's not on you, Antonio."

Antonio sucked in a breath to talk, but all the words came out in one long heaving sob, "She's my sister...you grow up with someone for 20 years, you think you know them...if I knew..." he shook his head and hit the mirror, "why didn't he tell me?"

"Would you have believed him?" Voight asked.

He stopped. "I don't know...he should've told me...he should've...he should've" the words became a mantra and Antonio started hitting the granite countertop in time with it, visibly nearing a breaking point.

Voight grabbed Antonio from behind in a restraining bear hug and felt Antonio struggle against him as he tried to get loose, screaming and sobbing the whole time he fought with Hank, but Voight's grip was strong and he was finally able to wait Antonio out, and felt the younger cop sag against him in exhaustion. Voight took that opportunity to tell him, "It's alright, he doesn't blame you."

"He should," Antonio replied.

"You're right, he should," Voight said bluntly, "but he doesn't. The one thing in your favor, Antonio, is he's a bigger man than you right now." Voight still didn't let up on his grip on Dawson, and told him, "Antonio, your sister needs help."

"I know," Antonio's voice was choked with tears, "but what can I do?"

"Casey's not in denial about the abuse, but he is in denial about her role in it, he just keeps saying 'it's not her fault', I know he wants to believe that, I know you _need_ to believe that...he said something that gave me an idea," Voight told him as he finally let go, "we're going to start by taking her to the hospital and have the docs check her over."

Antonio turned around and looked at Voight with a puzzled expression. "For what?"

* * *

Casey had already been near tears when Severide entered the room, and during Kelly's visit it was on and off for Casey, he alternated between his voice breaking and a couple stray tears working their way loose while he managed to blink back the rest, to his voice strong and his throat cleared and his eyes dried, and the two of them talked about everything, and nothing. Kelly didn't want to push the subject of what had been going on lest Casey get defensive over it, so he waited and let Casey bring it up first.

"How did you know?" he finally asked. He didn't remember getting an answer the last time, right after he'd asked Kelly, he'd been taken for his MRI.

"Remember a few months back when you were having nosebleeds every day for two weeks?" Kelly asked. "That first one in the bathroom, you bled all over the sink, _then_ you passed out on the floor. If you'd gotten that from a fight, I figured you would've told me, and when you didn't answer me, I figured there was only one other explanation. After that...I noticed you'd run off to the shower or to get dressed before or after everyone else had been around...trying to make sure nobody saw the bruises."

"But you did..." Casey realized.

"It took me a while to catch on...one day I realized those weren't caused by the job...and again, you wouldn't talk about it, what else was I supposed to think?"

Casey closed his eyes and lowered his head. "I didn't want anyone to know."

"I understand that, buddy, but you still should've told me, I would've believed you."

"That's not the problem," Casey raised his head and looked at him. "I don't...really remember where it started...Gabby wasn't like that when we first got together. We'd been together for a while...and we argued, who doesn't argue? But then..."

"Go on," Kelly lightly prodded.

"The first time she hit me," Casey's eyes spoke volumes how painful an experience it had been for him, even though he didn't actually say anything directly about it. "It was so sudden, it just came out of nowhere...I was stunned...I told myself it was a freak one time thing...I told myself it wouldn't happen again, _she_ wouldn't do it again...but it did, and she did."

Kelly felt his heart being torn apart listening to his best friend's confession on this sensitive subject, and he sensed that they'd just reached the tip of the iceberg.

"She hit me again some time later, and I said again, it won't happen again, it won't...it doesn't mean anything, she loves me, she would never intentionally...hurt me."

Kelly just sat by the bed and watched as Casey admitted to everything he'd been hiding from everyone for the past few months.

"She kept hitting me...and it started to take a lot less to set her off, and I just kept telling myself ' _this_ isn't abuse, _this_ isn't abuse'...I know abuse, I saw it every day growing up, I saw my dad abuse my mom, I knew what it looked like...and I always swore I'd never be like him, I would never do that to a woman..." Casey sighed and shook his head, his voice thick with tears again, "instead I grew up to be my mom."

Severide didn't have any idea what to say. He reached down to hug Casey and just whispered, "Buddy," not knowing where to go from there, it turned out he didn't need to.

"I told myself it wasn't worth starting any trouble, it wasn't worth walking away and ending our marriage over, it wasn't worth...telling anyone, and having them say I was making too much out of it or that I was being...emotional," Casey's voice continued to break by degrees as he pressed on to explain. "I kept thinking 'I can deal with this, we'll get past this', a few times, God help me I got so mad at her, I slapped her back just wanting it all to stop, instead she hit me harder."

Severide was tempted to say he was proud of Casey for striking back since it was in self defense, but he decided right now it was best to keep that to himself, it was obvious it weighed heavily on Matt's conscience.

"Then one time...she hit me in the head..." Casey raised his hand and traced it over the same spot where his skull had been fractured, and the tears started again as he recalled, "I got scared."

Kelly tightened his embrace on Casey, wanting his best friend to know he wasn't alone, he was safe now, it would be alright.

"I just kept thinking 'She knows, God, she knows it can kill me...why is she doing it? Why would she do that?'"

"I'm so sorry, Casey," Severide said in a low whisper.

Casey was openly sobbing again as he struggled to tell Kelly, "I still love her...but how could she do that to me?"

Kelly shook his head, "I don't know, buddy, I don't know."

"I still couldn't leave her...I still couldn't tell anyone, even when I knew...sooner or later she _would_ kill me...last night... _was_ it last night? I finally decided I was going to leave her...she kept hitting my head and she wouldn't stop...if Voight and the others hadn't come in..."

Casey was crying too hard to speak anymore, he turned and pressed his face against Kelly's chest and weakly clung to him. Severide felt his heart break in his chest listening to everything Casey had just told him. He'd _known_ it was bad, but he had no idea how severe it was, and hearing it was almost worse than all his suspicions for the last three months. He felt his eyes stinging with tears that were starting to build up, and he knew before long he'd be crying just as hard as Casey was. He held Matt even tighter against him and told him, his own voice starting to choke with tears, "It's over now, Matt, you're safe now, you're going to be okay..." he forced Casey to look up at him and choked out in a strained whisper, "Please don't cry." He lowered his head and pressed his forehead against Casey's, then before he realized what he was doing, he kissed Casey on the mouth.

By the time Severide _did_ realize what he'd done, he pulled back with a horrified look on his face, and saw Casey's eyes equally wide open looking up at him in shock, so much so that any and all sounds immediately ceased in his throat, and though his face was wet, the tears suddenly stopped coming. He just looked up at Kelly with a horrified expression on his face.

For a few seconds Kelly's brain couldn't even process any words to speak. The first thing that worked its way out was a mortified, "I'm sorry."

Casey lay back against the pillow, his eyes still wide open, and the only thing he said as he took in what just happened was a slow, uncertain, "O-hhhhhhhhh-kaaaaaaay."

Severide had _no_ idea how he was going to correct this one. Casey had enough to deal with right now without thinking his best friend, a _male_ firefighter, was coming on to him.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, louder this time, "I don't know why I did that."

Casey absently grabbed the blanket and pulled it up high on himself and said only in response, "Well, that settles it."

Kelly was scared to guess what that meant, even more afraid to ask, but he did, "What?"

Casey blinked a couple times, then answered, "If I ever had any doubts about being straight, that cemented it."

It took Severide a few seconds to figure out what Casey had said, and when it finally clicked, he laughed, and he noted the small amused smirk on Casey's face as he brushed away his tears with the back of his hand. The two men looked at each other and shortly busted out laughing.

* * *

"When am I getting out of here?" Gabby wanted to know as soon as Voight came through the door.

"We've been looking through your past," Voight told her.

She raised an eyebrow inquiringly, "What past?"

"The previous guys you banged on the job," Voight answered bluntly. "We reached out to that old boyfriend of yours in North Carolina, Mills? Now he says you never hit him while you two were together...he actually sounded shocked when we asked him about it."

"Why wouldn't he be?" Gabby asked, "You really think I would do something like that?"

"Would you like to see the video?" Voight replied.

She opened her mouth to respond, then closed it, then asked, "What video?"

"How do you think we knew what was going on in your apartment?" he asked.

Her eyes lit up with rage, "You were recording us? You are _sick_ , Voight, you know that?"

"Now that's ironic," Voight commented. "So let me get this straight, Casey gets his skull fractured, the docs say if it happens again, it _will_ kill him, they say it can happen at any time...so you pick his head for target practice while you're pounding on him? On top of your medical background so you would know exactly where to hit him and how hard. You know what we call that, Gabby? We call it premeditated attempted murder."

"What are you talking about? I never-"

Voight took a new stack of photos out of his jacket and tossed them on the table. These were the hospital photographs, all the bruises, old and new, freshly purple and faded green and yellow and all colors in between, from head to foot, the bruises under his hair, the claw marks on his back, a few injuries further south that stripped away any trace of privacy that may have been left for him.

"The States Attorney tries you for assault, attempted murder, whatever else, all of these pictures get blown up on a screen for the whole courtroom to see, the judge, the lawyers, the jurors, all the spectators in the gallery, every single fireman who comes to show their support for Casey, they all see what you done to him, have experts brought in who testify how your hands are the exact size of those prints on his back, his arms, even get an expert who can answer what you hit him with that made all those other bruises. You really want your husband to be subjected to all of that?"

Gabby's face had no notable expression on it, she looked like he was telling her the time of day.

"That's what I thought," Voight said, "I wondered how far down this rabbit hole you were actually willing to go when you got married...you're willing to do what it takes to benefit you, but you won't put yourself out there for the only man who's dumb enough to love you."

That got Gabby's attention and she glared at him.

"How _dare_ you say that to me?" she demanded to know.

"It's over, Gabby," Voight said simply. "Casey's told us about the beatings, but he keeps insisting it's not your fault, that there's some other explanation for what's going on. Maybe there is...for his sake I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You're going to Med, and the doctors are going to do a brain scan to see if there's a tumor or anything that could physically be responsible for your behavior. For _your_ sake, you better hope they find something," Voight told her warningly, his tone grave enough to raise her eyebrows, and he continued in a low, ominous tone, "Because if they _don't_ , and I find out you tried to kill Matt of your own volition...you and I, are going to have a serious problem."


	5. Chapter 5

When Voight returned to Casey's hospital room, he stopped in the doorway and was met with an interesting sight. Casey was asleep in the bed and Severide was asleep in the chair next to the bed, he'd slipped his hand through the bed rail to grasp Casey's hand in his own. Voight quietly entered the room and went over to Kelly and nudged him to wake him up.

"Huh? Wha?"

"Shh," Voight raised a finger to his lips and pointed towards Casey, "How's he doing?"

Kelly looked over at Matt, then checked his watch, and said, "He's been asleep for about an hour." He turned to Voight and asked, "What was Antonio doing here? You said he wouldn't be involved in the investigation."

"Can I talk to you outside?" Voight gestured to the hall.

Kelly looked to the door, then looked back down at Casey.

"It's alright, you can still see him," Voight assured the Squad lieutenant.

Reluctantly, Kelly let go of Casey's hand, got up, and followed Voight outside.

"Why are there cops crawling all over this hospital?" Kelly wanted to know. He'd noticed several familiar faces from Intelligence and a lot of patrolmen all over the place earlier. And he knew he wasn't 'supposed' to know that they were there, but he did, and he wanted to know why.

"Now just stay calm," Voight told him.

"Oh my God!" Kelly exclaimed, "You let Gabby _go_?"

"SH!" Voight firmly pressed a hand to Severide's mouth, coming very close to cutting the inside of his lips against his teeth. "Get one thing straight, I ain't cut Gabby Dawson loose. Okay?" He removed his hand and told Kelly, "She is not officially in police custody yet."

"What? Why not?" Severide demanded to know.

"Casey can't convince himself that Gabby's responsible for what she did to him," Voight told him. "So we're going to check it out and see if there's any truth to that. If not, I can put her back in custody at any time."

"What do you mean?" Kelly asked.

"She's in Med right now getting a brain scan to see if there's a tumor or anything else that could possibly be impairing her judgment," Voight said. He saw Kelly roll his eyes and asked him, "You think she's always been this way?"

He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it, and his eyes had a lost look in them as he said, "I don't know."

"If this _did_ just come out of nowhere, there has to be some kind of medical or scientific answer for it," Voight said. "If that's true, we're going to find out _before_ throwing her ass in jail, if not, then I'll deal with it."

"What does that even mean?" Severide asked.

"It means I'll deal with it," Voight told him in a not totally unfamiliar don't-question-my-authority tone. He looked Severide dead in the eyes and told him, "Trust me, Kelly, no matter what, she is _not_ going to get to come back to Matt. She's never getting another shot at him."

Severide forgot about the fact he was in no position to threaten the man who once took a hit out on Casey, and simply responded in a low, ominous tone, "Make sure of that."

"Kelly?" Matt's voice weakly called out from the hospital room.

Both men looked in and saw he was just starting to wake up. Kelly turned back to Voight, who merely answered, "Go." Severide turned and headed back in.

"I'm here, Casey," he said as he went over to the bed, "What is it? What do you need?"

Casey slowly opened his eyes fully and looked up at Kelly and asked, "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure, buddy, you can tell me anything, what is it?"

Casey closed his eyes, and sucked in a noisy breath, and said quietly, "I did love Louie...I loved being a dad."

"I know you did, Casey," Severide smiled at him.

Casey managed a small smile, but it quickly disappeared as he told Kelly, "But I also loved Ben and Griffin, I loved them as much as I did Louie..."

Kelly wasn't sure he was getting it. He maintained a smile but shrugged his shoulders and asked, "What's wrong with that?"

Casey looked at him and said, "I don't know...just seems something's wrong there...Andy's boys...they should be more important because he was family...but I don't think I could love any kids any more, or less, or differently, than I did all three of them, even if...if I'd had my own...the baby Gabby lost...I think if it had lived, that it'd be the same...that's wrong, isn't it?"

It was confusing to try and keep up with what he was saying, but Severide continued to smile assuredly and shook his head, "No, Matt, that's what every parent's supposed to do, love all their kids the same and _not_ have favorites."

Casey breathed heavily again and closed his eyes, then opened them again. "After losing Louie...I could've...I could've gone through it again, another kid...I could take the risk...the risk of losing them again..." he shook his head, "Not Gabby, it hurt her too much..." his eyes widened slightly as he said, as if trying to make sure Kelly understood, "We fought, about that."

"She hit you then?" he asked.

"We fought," was all he was willing to say. He shook his head, "She didn't want to do it...she wouldn't even think about it."

Severide could appreciate everything that was going on was a lot for Casey to deal with, and he knew there'd be plenty of time later to sort it all out, but he also knew that Casey hadn't been able to tell anybody about any of this, so if he wanted to talk about it now, they would. Kelly glanced to the doorway and saw that Voight was gone.

"Kelly...do you hate me?" Casey asked. His tone was almost too exhausted to even be self conscious of the question.

Kelly turned back to him and blinked. He didn't even know how to respond to that, he couldn't for the life of him figure out what it meant, if Casey was talking about the thing with the boys, or about the whole sordid mess with Gabby in general.

"Of course not," he said, figuring he'd cover all bases just to be sure, "I could never hate you."

"You've hated me before," Casey pointed out.

"I did not," Kelly replied in an annoyed tone, "I've been mad at you, but I didn't hate you."

"I hated you," Casey admitted.

For some reason, Kelly felt like he should be surprised, and yet it didn't catch him too much off guard.

"When?" he asked.

"All the times you acted like a self righteous idiot," Casey answered weakly.

Kelly tried to stifle a laugh but lost that fight. "Okay, fair point, but even so, do you still hate me?"

"No," Casey looked up at him, his eyes wide and filled with something that either leaned towards awe or terror, Kelly couldn't be sure which. "You saved my life..."

Casey's whole body went into spasms as a dry sob tore through him. Kelly leaned over the bed rail and hugged him. "Hey, hey, it's alright, buddy, everything's going to be okay. You're going to be fine."

"W-wh-where's Gabby?" Casey asked.

"It's alright, Casey, you don't have to worry about her, she can't get to you."

"Where is she?"

Severide wasn't sure why Matt kept asking about Gabby, and he wasn't sure how to answer.

* * *

"Well?" Antonio anxiously asked as Voight came up to him in the waiting room at Med.

Voight shook his head. "Not a tumor, the brain scan came back clean."

Antonio sighed in relief. "What's that mean now?"

"Well, the psychiatrists want to take a stab at her, see if she's got some mental disorder that could be why she tried to kill Casey," Hank answered as he sat down beside the younger cop in the waiting room. "They already told me it's gonna be a couple hours easily, why don't you go on home and rest?"

Antonio shook his head. "I have to know what's wrong with my sister."

"I can call you as soon as I talk to the docs," Voight said. "There's no sense anybody else sitting around here all day than's necessary."

Antonio shook his head again. "I need to be here...I don't know what the hell's going on, Voight, I don't want anything to be wrong with Gabby, but I also don't want to see her go to prison, I don't want to lose my sister...but what I saw on that video...that is _not_ my sister...I feel like I'm losing my mind."

"I think we just got an inside view to Casey's life for the last year," Voight told him.

Antonio sighed, "How's he doing?"

"Severide's with him, seemed to be doing okay last I saw, docs want to watch him for a couple days, make sure there're no surprises, after that they'll send him home."

Dawson dropped his head in his hands and sighed, "Thank God."

"I'll be the first to say you should've been paying better attention to what was going on," Voight told him, "seeing as how you _are_ involved in their lives...but it's not your fault this happened, Antonio."

"Then whose is it?" he asked helplessly.

"That's what the docs are gonna find out," Voight answered. "In the meantime all we can do is wait."

Antonio nodded, and picked his head up and asked, "What if they can't find anything either?"

"Well then your sister and I are gonna have a problem," Voight said bluntly.

"You can't do that, Hank. I know how you do," Antonio shook his head.

"I'm _not_ going to let her get by with a slap on the wrist, she nearly killed a man, her own husband, a lieutenant in the CFD, _your_ brother in law."

"I know that!" Antonio told him. "None of this makes sense, Hank."

"I know...and I'm sorry that you're in the middle of it, but if they tell us Gabby was in full control when she tried to murder Casey, I'm going to handle it the way I see fit," Voight explained. "And you just have to trust me."

Antonio's eyes glazed over with tears. "What're you gonna do, Hank?"

"That's gonna depend on what the docs say."

* * *

Hank returned to Casey's room at Lakeshore and was not expecting the sight that met him. The bed was empty, the sheets were gone, Casey was nowhere to be found, and Severide just sat in a chair next to the bed with an empty look on his face.

"What happened?" Voight asked, feeling a knot forming in his stomach.

Kelly didn't even look at him, his eyes were distant like he was miles away, and he said absently, "Casey started throwing up again...they rushed him out of here."

"The concussion?"

"I don't know," Severide shrugged his shoulders cluelessly, "they said they were going to do some tests and find out what's going on."

"When was that?" Voight asked.

Kelly finally turned and looked at Hank, and answered, "About two hours ago. I haven't heard anything since."

Voight closed his eyes as he suddenly felt a stabbing pain right between them. How could things have gone south so quickly when Casey was fine the last time he'd been there?

"Well?" Kelly asked, interrupting his thoughts. "What'd you find out?"

Voight shook his head and opened his eyes to look at the lieutenant, "No tumor. They did 2 scans to make sure, nothing."

Severide had no idea whether he should be relieved by that or not. "So that's it?"

"No," Hank answered, "now the psychiatrists are gonna take turns poking at her until tomorrow and see if she's schizo or anything like that."

Kelly rolled his eyes and groaned. Something occurred to him and he asked, "How'd you get Gabby to agree to that?"

"I have my ways, you should know that by now," Voight said.

Kelly shifted his gaze towards the floor, even so Hank was able to see tears starting to well up in his eyes.

"Severide..."

Kelly looked up at him and said, "If Casey dies because I didn't help him sooner..."

Voight shook his head, "You can't think that way, Kelly, we don't know anything yet."

Severide heard something and saw Voight pulling up a second chair and setting it beside his, and the Intelligence sergeant sat down right next to him. He returned his gaze to the floor, after a minute he felt Voight's hand grip his own and felt the cop's strength nearly crush his knuckles. Much as he hated to admit it, Kelly took some comfort in the cop's presence, whatever happened next at least he wouldn't be alone, he supposed that meant something. He rolled his eyes towards the ceiling and quietly prayed, both hoping and dreading that moment when they found out what had happened.


	6. Chapter 6

"You guys look like crap."

Kelly hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep, but he knew that voice, he opened his eyes and saw Voight had also fallen asleep in the chair next to him, and was also starting to come around. Severide turned and felt his eyes bulge as he saw Casey being wheeled back into the room by an orderly.

"How long have you two been here?" Matt asked.

"Casey!" Kelly shot up in his seat, "What happened? What'd they find out?"

"Nothing, I'm fine," Casey insisted as he was wheeled over to his bed, "I want to go home."

"You're not going anywhere until the doc says so," the orderly told him as Casey stood up and climbed back into the hospital bed. He turned to the two visitors and explained, "He'll be here in a minute to talk to you."

"Thanks," Voight said as he sat up straight in his chair and stretched his arms.

"Casey, are you alright?" Kelly was frantic to know something.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Casey shrugged it off, "you were here all night?"

"All night?" Kelly looked at his watch and saw it was 7 o' clock in the morning. "Where were you all night? What did they do to you?"

"Found out why he wouldn't stop throwing up for one thing," the doctor answered as he entered the room. Kelly turned around at the man's voice and he and Voight both looked at him, eager to know what was going on. "It's not his head, CT scans came back clear on that...he has an ulcer."

"What?" Kelly asked.

"A _stress_ ulcer," the doctor emphasized, "in his stomach, that's why nobody caught it when he was brought in. _That's_ why he threw up in the ambulance."

"I don't have-" Casey shook his head and started to respond, but he was cut off.

"Shut up, Matt," Voight said firmly. He looked to the doctor and said, "Go on."

"He's on medications for it now, it should clear up in a couple weeks, we pointed out if he could eliminate some of the stress that's been exacerbating his condition, that would help tremendously."

"I said I don't-"

"And I said shut up," Voight told the Truck lieutenant.

"As far as I can tell, he's had it for a while...on a hunch I had a specialist take a look at him."

Kelly raised one eyebrow curiously, "An ulcer specialist?"

"No, sleep specialist...we're not prospective enough to have a sleep center in our hospital but one of their specialists does come here periodically to examine patients to know if they need to be transferred for tests...he'll be in a little later to tell you _his_ business, I just work on the holes in his stomach. We'll keep him on antibiotics and anti-acid medication as long as he's in the hospital, when he's discharged I'll get him a prescription to fill."

"Thank you, you can go now," Casey groggily commented as he rubbed his eyes.

Once the doctor was gone, Kelly turned to Casey and asked, "What did he mean sleep specialist?"

"It's nothing, Kelly, really, I just need to go home and take it easy," Matt told him.

Within two minutes, Casey's head tilted to the side and he was out cold.

"What do you suppose that's about?" Kelly asked.

Voight shrugged. His phone buzzed and he took it out of his pocket to see who it was.

"I have to go," he told Severide, "you gonna be alright by yourself?"

Kelly nodded. "Yeah."

Hank managed to keep a nonchalant front until he was out of the room, then he quickened his steps as he headed towards the exit and got in his car to race back to Chicago Med.

* * *

Antonio hardly even looked recognizable by the time Voight arrived. His shirt was ripped on one side of the neck, he had bloody claw marks dug into his shoulder, one eye was swollen and purple, his jaw was taking on a blue tinge.

"What the hell happened?" Hank asked.

Antonio was surprisingly calm as he explained to his superior, "Gabby just bought herself a one-way ticket to a 72 hour psyche hold."

"What?"

Dawson shook his head, "The doctors weren't getting anywhere, she was about to walk out of here. I come up, she's all smiles, thinks I'm going to get her out of this mess. I tried to force her hand so they could see she's a threat to other people and forcibly commit her, buy some time for the shrinks to finish working on her."

"Antonio, what the hell did you do?" Voight asked, still in a state of shock that Gabby could've done this to her own brother of all people, who he _knew_ she had never shown _any_ signs of violence to in her entire life.

"I asked her how she could do something so _stupid_ , I said it's no wonder she went back to being a paramedic because she was too emotional to ever last as a firefighter...told her I don't know how the hell she's hung on so long as a paramedic either since she nearly kills so many people when she goes out on call...said it's a good thing they took Louie away from her because if this is how she acts it was just a matter of time before she killed that kid...she went ballistic."

"I can _see_ that," Voight replied.

"Did I ever tell you I taught her how to box when we were younger?" Antonio asked. "No kid gloves, she's one tough bitch and I was always proud of her for it...she put it to use today."

"And on Casey," Voight added.

Antonio nodded somberly. "She knew damn well what she was doing."

Voight looked at him and pointed out, "Severide said she never hit Casey in the face because that would've been a dead giveaway."

Antonio absently touched the bruise around his eye and responded, "She knew she was losing control of the situation."

"She _lost_ control of it when she tried to kill Casey," Voight pointed out.

"I know..." Antonio closed his eyes and tried to push away everything he'd seen in the last couple days. He opened them again and shook his head. "I don't know what the hell happened, Hank...it's like I went to sleep and the pod people replaced her...I've never seen her like this."

"Gabby always _knew_ how to _let_ you see her so you wouldn't suspect anything," Voight told him. "She's very good at what she does."

"Yeah, I'm finding that out," Antonio sniffed as blood started to trickle down one nostril.

"You did the right thing, Antonio," Hank said, "hopefully now the doctors can find out what's going on and we can get some answers."

"Some choice," Antonio replied. "Either my sister is crazy, or she's a cold blooded bitch...how do I deal with either one of those?"

Voight didn't have an answer.

"Come on, let's get you looked it," he said.

"I'm fine," Antonio insisted.

"I know," Voight said, "we'll do it anyway, come on."

* * *

By the time Voight returned to Lakeshore to see what the news was with Casey, he and Severide were both asleep, Casey in the bed facing away from the door, Severide in the chair right next to the bed, his head tilted so far back he was about to lay on Casey. Voight stepped over to Kelly and nudged him.

"Huh-wha-what happened? What is it?" he asked as he sat up.

"Been a new development, Gabby's going to stay in the psyche ward for a couple days," Voight said.

"What happened?"

"Antonio pushed her buttons, now she tried to kill _him_."

Kelly looked at Voight with an almost blank stare for a few seconds, then he shot up from his seat, "What?"

"Whatever's going on, the mask is coming off, everybody's starting to see Gabby for what she really is," Voight told him, and gestured to Matt, "What'd the doc say?"

"Uh..." Kelly looked back at Matt, and shook his head, "it took a few tries to get what he was saying...I know trauma wounds, but a guy starts talking about internal clocks and..." he pointed to his temple, "does not compute, you know?"

"So what'd he say?" Hank asked.

"Well he went on for a while about everybody's got a different internal clock that they all need so many hours of sleep a night to actually function right, talking about when you come up short on hours it has to be put back somewhere..." the mood changed before Severide said the next thing he did, "and he said Casey's been running on empty for so long he should already be dead."

" _What_?"

Kelly rubbed one eye and explained, "Apparently they took him to that sleep center last night and ran some kind of tests, I don't get what it was all about..." he shook his head as if trying to clear it from a fog, "they said it didn't cause his ulcers but it's definitely helped aggravate his condition because his immune system is shot to hell. The guy basically said Casey's body is so...sleep starved...actually he called it a debt, he said they normally recommend people with this problem get a regular amount of sleep and an extra hour on top of that, each night until the debt is gone...but in his case, they recommended him staying asleep for the better part of the next week."

Voight slowly took this all in, and asked, "And how do they intend to do that?"

Kelly shrugged. "I don't know, they don't want to put him on sedatives incase his ulcers would make him throw up again and he'd choke on his vomit. So they're...doing whatever it is they do, to try and figure out how to help him." He looked up at the Intelligence sergeant and asked helplessly, "He hates it here, he's not going to get enough rest with everything going on, can't I just take him home?"

"You think he'd get any rest there, knowing everything that's gone on there?" Voight asked.

Kelly groaned as he rubbed his other eye, that hadn't occurred to him. "He could stay at my place, I could keep an eye on him."

" _You_ are eventually gonna fall asleep and you won't know if he will or not," Voight pointed out. "Sorry, Kelly, it's better he stays here for the time being so the doctors can monitor him."

Kelly sighed as he tilted his head down and ran his hands over the back of it.

"Did they say what the cause of this is?" Voight asked.

"They found out what was going on, the doc says Casey probably went into survival mode every night to make sure Gabby didn't kill him in his sleep...that he might've slept but it didn't do any good because he couldn't rest, so his clock couldn't reset itself, something along those lines. They said...his blood pressure's out of whack, his blood sugar, hormone levels, said we can expect a lot of mood swings until he's better...started talking about microsleep, saying as little as Casey's been running on, that there should've been a lot of instances where his body fell asleep for anywhere between a second and a few minutes...apparently people who do don't know that they do it and it just leaves them more confused than before. Like, they close their eyes and bam, five minutes have gone by and they didn't know it. The doctor said if this happened, Casey would just appear to blank out..."

"And has he?" Voight asked, suspecting where this was going.

Kelly reluctantly nodded, "I just thought it was because of what was going on and he was trying to hide it from all of us...there were a lot of times on shift the last couple months he just seemed to be staring off into space for a couple minutes...if I'd known what it meant, I would've done something quicker."

"This is not on you, Kelly, you did everything you knew how to do," Voight told him. "The doctor said Matt _can_ recover from this, right?"

"Just as long as he gets enough sleep," Severide answered. "He said the doctors here should've caught on to how bad of shape his vitals were in when he was first brought in here."

"At that time their main priority was his head because they knew the history of his skull fracture," Voight told him. "This place was a disaster area that night, I'm not sure they even got done running all the tests on him."

"Well...apparently the amount of sleep he's gotten since that night hasn't been enough, his body's still running on empty, and the doctor said if this becomes a long term thing it's going to give him heart disease, he could have a heart attack..."

"Right now you don't look much better than him," Hank said, "why don't you go on home and get some rest? I'll stay with him."

Kelly shook his head.

"He won't be alone, Kelly, I can promise you that," Voight told him.

"I wasn't there for him the first time," Kelly said, "I need to be here when he wakes up."

"Commendable, but I _will_ have you forcibly removed if I have to," Voight pointed a finger at him. "Casey's not going anywhere, you can come back and see him in a few hours." He reached down and grabbed Kelly's wrist and pulled him to his feet, "Come on, get up, go home."

"You'll let me know if anything changes?" The concern in Severide's voice was evident.

Voight nodded, "Of course."

Kelly nodded in understanding. He took one step, then turned around and threw his arms around Voight. His throat was tight, his eyes stung with tears, his whole body felt weak.

"Thank you," he choked out. Given the history that existed between Casey and Voight, Severide never would've thought he could depend on Hank of all people to help Matt, until circumstances left him without any choice, and he sure as hell never imagined he would be indebted to the Intelligence sergeant for saving his best friend's life. Life truly was a strange thing.

He felt Voight's hand on the back of his head and he jerked involuntarily.

"Hey, listen to me," Voight said in a softer tone than Kelly could ever remember hearing, "you did the right thing, we got him out, Casey's gonna be alright. You go take care of you now, I got this."

Kelly reluctantly nodded and pulled away. He looked back towards Casey who was curled up on his side and seemingly dead to the world, and finally forced himself to leave the room.

Severide had actually been considering going home to crash for a few hours, when he saw Antonio in the corridor near the waiting room. The cop had his back to Kelly as he seemed to pace the floor, but Severide knew it was him.

"Antonio!" he called in disbelief.

Dawson turned at his name and saw Severide stomping over towards him, and he anticipated another knock-down drag-out fight today. Before Severide had a chance to clock him, Antonio tried to explain his side. "I'm sorry, Kelly, I had no idea that-"

He'd been expecting Kelly to punch him in the face or knock him into the wall, and in his current state he didn't even try to protect himself from the pending blow because he figured he deserved it for letting Matt down, but instead Antonio felt his spine being crushed and felt the wind knocked out of him as his body was pressed as physically tight against Severide's as was possible and his feet just about left the floor. He didn't get it.

"Voight told me what you did," Kelly explained, and somehow impossibly tightened the bear hug he had Antonio in. "Thank you."

Antonio tried to pull back but couldn't until Kelly finally eased his grip on him.

"I'm sorry, I swear I had no idea what was going on," he told the lieutenant.

Kelly nodded sympathetically. "She's very good at what she does, Antonio. She knew how to hide it from everyone."

"It's still my sister," Antonio told him. "I don't know which end is up anymore, I'm supposed to _hope_ my sister has a brain tumor that could kill her that could explain why she tried to kill Matt. Now I'm supposed to hope that it turns out she has some mental disorder that's making her so she doesn't know what she's doing."

"But she _does_ know what she's doing," Severide pointed out. "That's how she knew not to do it around any of us, that's why she never..." he trailed off what he was going to say about hitting Casey in the face when he took in the various shades of purple and blue that Antonio's own face was taking right now.

"I can't make any sense of the whole thing, Kelly," Antonio told him, and shrugged, "Where did I go wrong? What did I miss? Nobody just wakes up one day like this, but she was _never_ like this when we were growing up."

"Maybe you just didn't know her as well as you thought you did," Severide said. "It happens."

"I can't accept it," Dawson replied. "But maybe now that they are going to hold her for a few days, maybe they will find something that it'll start to make some kind of sense."

Kelly paused for a moment before responding, and when he did he decided to try for an answer to a previous question, "Antonio, why does Voight have this hospital crawling with cops?" Severide knew he wasn't supposed to know that they were there, but he knew, and he knew it wasn't just coincidence.

Antonio just looked at him, and without saying anything, Severide seemed to get the answer.

"Oh God...Voight really thinks she could get out and come here?"

Antonio sighed. "It's just a precaution, Kelly, she's probably figured out Casey isn't at Med with her...but she also shouldn't be able to figure out he's still here...but if she would, and if she'd manage to charm her way past the doctors there..."

Kelly nodded grimly. "I got it, covering all bases."

Antonio nodded in response. "I don't like it anymore than you do...but after what I saw today..." suddenly his legs felt weak, he leaned against the wall for support. "I can't put anything past her."

"What're you doing here?" Kelly finally thought to ask.

"I came to see Matt...I wanted to apologize."

"I thought you did that already."

Antonio laughed dryly. "I got a lot of ground to cover."

"Yeah, you and me both," Kelly replied.

* * *

Voight had been sitting with Casey for two hours and was just about to fall asleep himself when Casey suddenly shot up in bed with a pronounced "AHHHHH!" Hank shot up from his chair and was by Casey's side immediately, and watched the blonde man's eyes try to focus as he stood over him and calmly told him, "You're alright, it's over, take it easy, Matt."

Casey breathed heavily as he started to realize he was in the hospital and tried to calm down. He looked at Voight and asked him, "What're you doing here?"

"Rotating with Severide," Hank answered.

Casey rubbed his eyes, and it looked like they could focus now, and he said, half tiredly, half resentfully, "I don't need someone staying with me."

"Yeah you do," Voight replied simply, calmly. "The docs have been filling us in on what's been going on."

Casey closed his eyes, tipped his head down and groaned.

"So let's try this again, how long has this been going on?" Voight asked. "Surely you know how long you _haven't_ been sleeping."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does because they're not going to let you out of here until they're convinced you're not going to drop dead of exhaustion," Voight told him. "When they took you yesterday for those tests...did you do a lot of _that_?" by which it was obvious Voight meant him waking up screaming.

Casey sighed. "Some."

"Uh huh."

"Why can't I just go home?" Casey asked him. "I'm fine, nothing's broken, my head's fine, I'm on meds for the ulcers, I should be able to leave."

"Maybe," Voight said as he reached over and straightened out the blanket to cover Casey up again, "but for now we're going to humor the experts. You going to throw up again?"

"No," Casey shook his head.

"You need to use the bathroom?"

"No."

"You hungry?"

"No," Casey repeated, not getting where Voight was going with this.

"Then go back to sleep," Hank told him.

"Hank..."

"Go back to sleep," he said again, an ominous undertone in his voice this time.

"Voight..."

"Casey, this is not negotiable, the doctors said you've so sleep deprived that you should be dead right now. They don't know how, but they said as worn out as you are, there should've been about a hundred red flags on the job, accidents, hallucinations, inability to concentrate...I don't know if you managed to just push ahead on pure reflex and adrenaline or what, but you and everybody on every job you responded to got damn lucky. But you're not going to tempt fate like that again. The _only_ way the doctors, and me, are letting you out of here is if you go to sleep and _stay_ asleep," Voight told him.

Voight looked into the wide and tired eyes of the Truck lieutenant, and in a softer tone he told the younger man, "You're safe now, Casey, Gabby's not here, she can't hurt you, you can _relax_ now...somebody's going to be with you at all times, you're _safe_. You can go to sleep."

And there it was. Voight had seen through the chink in Casey's armor. It was one thing to lose sleep due to stress from the job, or typical everyday parts of life, but nobody knew Casey hadn't been sleeping, and especially nobody knew it was because he'd reached a point he felt he couldn't afford to let his guard down. Now, all of a sudden, after months of not being able to confide in anybody, here was the man Casey least expected to be of any help to him, and he'd put it all together, and he'd seen through to Casey's biggest vulnerability. Somewhere in his mind he knew he should be relieved that it was all out now and somebody else knew about it, but he couldn't oversee the part of his brain that told him he should be ashamed that everybody knew what had happened. Never in his life since he'd met Voight could he ever anticipate this man offering any comfort to him for anything, not that he'd ever want it, but here they were, and here it was, and though half of him wanted to reject it, he couldn't.

"Hank..." Casey felt his throat getting tight.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you," Casey hadn't felt the tears building up in his eyes but he felt them start to roll down his cheek.

"Be sure you thank Severide, he's the one who brought me in on this," Hank told him as he reached over and Casey felt his callused thumb on his cheek brushing away the tears. "Go to sleep, Matt, everything's going to be alright."


	7. Chapter 7

Kelly woke up and realized he'd slept twice as long as he'd planned to. He got in his car and rushed back to Lakeshore, and just as he got out of his car, he saw Antonio pulling up as well.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Voight's not answering his phone," Antonio pointed to Hank's car, "he's still here."

" _Still?_ He's been here this whole time?" Kelly asked.

"If not, I'd like to know what's going on," Antonio said. "You call Casey?"

"He doesn't have his phone...I didn't think to bring it," Kelly answered as they headed towards the entrance.

"You don't think something happened, do you?" Severide asked.

"I'm hoping not but Hank was supposed to be back at the 2-1 before this," Antonio told him.

"He said he'd tell me if anything changed," Kelly said.

"Let's go."

The two made their way down the corridors until they reached Casey's room, and both of them stopped at the doorway, and neither could believe what they saw. There weren't any words that could begin to describe their shock.

Casey was asleep in the hospital bed curled on his side. And Voight was laying on the bed next to him, Casey's head resting on Voight's chest, Voight's hand on the back of Casey's head, Casey's chest moving up and down in slow, even breaths.

Severide and Antonio just stood at the threshold, unable to move, speak, let alone think. Neither of them knew what to do.

At some point they both became aware of Hank Voight looking at them through the corner of one eye. The Intelligence sergeant motioned for them to be quiet, but also gestured for them to come over and help him. Stepping lightly, Kelly went over and carefully slipped his hand under Casey's head and supported it as Voight moved out from under him and inched over to the edge of the bed, Kelly slowly eased Casey's head down on his pillow as Voight quietly stood up and stretched and tried to work the kinks out of his upper body. He motioned for the others to follow him out to the hall, and they did.

"What the hell happened?" Kelly wanted to know as soon as they were out of Casey's room.

"Guy's got problems," was all Voight said in response.

"Hank, what's going on?" Antonio asked.

"It's the only way he doesn't keep waking up screaming thinking Gabby's trying to kill him," Voight explained.

That took any and all wind out of both of their sails.

"How long were you..."

"Long enough," Hank answered.

* * *

It had been after the third time that Casey woke up screaming. Hank finally got him to calm down, and tried to get Casey to go back to sleep, but he could easily see this vicious cycle repeating itself, so he decided to get creative in how he handled it.

"Move over," he told Casey.

Matt looked at him skeptically as he scooted over to the right side of the bed, and asked hesitantly, "What for?"

"I'm gonna try something," was all Hank told him as he climbed in on the other side of the bed.

Casey made a small sound in his throat and dryly commented, "Now I know what they mean by sleeping with the devil."

Any other time Voight would've had a response to that, but he decided if Casey was in enough presence of mind to still have reservations with the older man, to take it as a sign of improvement.

"Now what?" Casey asked. Between the two of them the bed got pretty cramped.

And Voight was about to make it even more so. He reached over and less than gently pushed Casey's head down and told him, "Get your head down here" and forced Casey's ear against his chest. He gave the blonde lieutenant a few seconds to get adjusted to it and to hear the beating in his chest, and he asked Casey, "Hear that?"

He felt Casey nod.

"That means I'm here. It means you're not alone..." Voight paused as he watched the expression on Matt's face change, and in a softer tone he told the younger man, "You're safe, Casey, nobody can get to you in here. Now go to sleep."

"Voight..."

Voight lowered his voice and practically said into Casey's ear, "Matt...I am not going to _let_ anybody get to you...now trust me, and go to sleep."

Casey was quiet after that, Voight watched him and after a few minutes saw Casey's eyelids start to get heavy, he tried to keep them open, but every time he blinked they stayed shut a little longer, and finally they stayed shut, and his head cocked to the side, a small hum emanated from his throat, and after a few more minutes he raised his arm and slung it over Voight's ribs. Hank looked down at the lieutenant, and raised his hand and carefully stroked over the back of Casey's head, and watched the younger man while he slept. Every so often he looked at the clock. An hour passed. Then another. His whole body was stiff but he didn't move. Another hour passed. Casey moved slightly in his sleep every so often, turning, stretching, scratching, scooting on his hip to curl up closer against Voight, oh the irony indeed. Voight was not oblivious to how sad the fact was that anybody, but especially a lieutenant in the CFD, had to be hospitalized to actually feel safe enough to sleep through the night for the first time in months.

* * *

"It's the first time he's _stayed_ asleep," Voight explained to Antonio and Severide. "Somebody's going to _have_ to stay with him at all times."

"I can stay with him," Kelly said.

"It would be better to rotate with somebody," Voight replied.

"What about somebody else from 51?" Antonio asked.

"Oh shit," Kelly got a panicked look on his face. "We're supposed to be on shift tomorrow. How am I gonna explain this one to everybody?"

"You don't have to," Voight told him. "I'll do it."

"No!" for some reason that idea particularly seemed to scare the hell out of Severide.

The two cops looked at him questioningly.

"I can assure you," Voight told Kelly, "I know how to handle this."

"What're you gonna do?" Severide wanted to know.

"You just stay here and keep an eye on Matt, let me worry about that," Hank said.

* * *

Hank played the video taken from Casey's apartment the night of his attack, and waited, and watched as Wallace saw what had unfolded two days ago. He watched as the color drained out of Boden's face.

"Stop," he finally said, sounding sickened by what he'd just witnessed, "stop it."

Voight paused the footage and pocketed his phone. "I'm sorry, Wallace, I know this is hard to come to terms with."

"How..." Boden looked like he was going to be sick, and he struggled to swallow, "how long has this been going on?"

"We really don't know," Voight told him. "Severide brought it to my attention four days ago."

Wallace looked at him with a puzzled expression. "Severide came to _you_?"

"Tells you how desperate he was," Hank said.

Boden struggled to take that one in. He asked Voight, "And how long has _he_ known something was going on?"

"Well, he started getting photographic evidence about three months ago."

Boden actually seemed to be turning gray from this revelation.

"Chief..." Voight shook his head, "please don't think that you weren't told because your men don't trust you. It was a bad situation, Casey wouldn't admit what was going on, and there was no point asking Gabby if it was true, she'd never admit to beating Casey. Severide had no evidence, and he knew how bad it would look if he publicly accused Gabby in any way."

"And when he _had_ the pictures?"

"It's a bad situation, Chief...nobody wants anyone to get hurt...a guy beats his wife, somebody finds out, they call attention to it, nothing's done, he just beats her harder when they get home because she made him look bad...we don't have enough info on abusive wives to know if they operate the same way, but it's probably a safe bet. And I'm sure you can figure out why Casey never said anything."

Wallace grunted under his breath. Despite the situation, Voight cracked a smile, he'd almost think he was rubbing off on the battalion chief.

"Battered men hardly report their abuse as is, because everybody knows nobody is going to take them seriously, not the police, not the courts, there's a whole psychology to it that nobody looks at because the only thing they focus on is the sex and the physical size of the attacker," Voight explained. "Casey's position is worse, it isn't _just_ that he's a man, a firefighter, it's that his wife, who is beating the crap out of him, _works_ at the same station house as he does. He says anything, not only is it his word against hers, the whole firehouse is divided as everybody tries to figure out who to believe. You guys are all family, what happens when family starts picking sides? He knew it would happen, Gabby's been there long enough that nobody would believe it, even if they did, not everybody would, and the rift that that would cause, could permanently damage the relationship you all have. He wasn't willing to risk that. It was easier for him to just take what Gabby did, and keep his mouth shut."

A strained laugh escaped Boden, "Yeah, that's Casey, he keeps _everything_ to himself..." he shook his head and asked, "why the hell did this have to be one of them?"

"Who would he tell?" Voight pointed out. "He knows how you feel about her, he knows you wouldn't believe it if you didn't see it...he didn't know anybody recorded any proof, he wouldn't tell a cop, Antonio's her brother, that's a no-win situation, me?" Voight grunted and shook his head. "Our history would make that very difficult...it's still difficult now."

"Who else knows?" Boden asked.

"As yet, nobody from 51, my men know, some of the doctors at Lakeshore, so far that's it," Voight answered.

"Anyone with him?"

"Severide and Antonio are there now."

"Antonio?" Boden blinked. "How did he take the news?"

"It's his sister, he doesn't want to believe it, but he can't deny it, he saw the video too...whatever happened between he and Casey, they seem to have patched it up."

"And where's Gabby now?" Boden asked.

"Not in custody yet, the docs at Med are taking a run at her to see if there's any medical explanation for what she did...I wouldn't hold my breath, Wallace, I know you love this girl like a daughter, but she's just plain evil."

Much as Wallace wanted to, he couldn't argue with that after what he'd just seen.

"As I'm sure you can understand, Severide's going to probably be asking for the next shift off...he's hellbent on not leaving Casey's side right now."

"How...how do I explain this to everyone at 51 tomorrow?"

"If you want, I could help break the news to them," Voight offered.

Wallace looked at Voight through the corner of his eye and said, "I might have to take you up on that...none of this makes any sense.

Boden called Herrmann and told him to open up Molly's, and he personally called everyone else from 51 and told them to come to the bar, and not ask any questions.

* * *

Voight froze the video taken from the time of Gabby's arrest, and he and Boden looked at the firefighters and EMS who were seated around the bar. To varying degrees everybody looked like they were going to be sick, some looked stunned by the shock of it all, suddenly everybody from 51 could've easily passed as an extra in a zombie movie.

"I know this is hard for everyone to take in," he told them. "I know everybody has questions. Matt Casey is being treated for his injuries at Lakeshore, he has requested no visitors from 51. Scan showed no new damage to his fracture." Some of the firemen sighed in relief at that news. "He's being monitored to make sure nothing new develops, he's also being treated for stress ulcers, and exhaustion. Gabriela Dawson is currently in a 72 hour psyche hold at Med. We want to make sure whether or not she is in full control of her actions or not before we proceed. We know that she's been abusing Casey for at least three months, before that we have no way of knowing, so we need your help to fill in the holes. Whether she has a psychological disorder or not, we need to establish a window of time when her violent behavior got started. If anybody knows anything, this is the time to tell it. Anybody ever see anything, hear anything on shift, Gabby get violent with anyone, threaten anyone? Even if you didn't think she was serious. Even if you didn't think it was important at the time. If so, this is when you want to open up."

For a few minutes everyone just sat there looking at one another in shock, and nobody said a word.

Then, finally, Mouch raised an inquiring finger and got out a borderline, "Uhhh..."

"What is it, Randy?" Voight asked.

"Well, as union rep for 51, there have been a few instances over the years where Gabby's been written up relating to her conduct on the job...most of it's just standard protocol of the higher ups have no idea what we do, the conditions we do them in, the facts at hand, they haven't had to get their hands dirty for 20 years and just got used to parking their asses behind a desk and dictating what everyone under them should be doing. Most of it is perfectly explainable if you're actually in the field and see what we deal with every shift."

"But?" Boden asked.

Mouch bit the corner of his lip as he chose his next words carefully. "There have been a few instances in which she used more force than was necessary when dealing with volatile people on the job. At the time it was all chalked up to heat of the moment encounters with potentially dangerous people, but...now I'm not sure."

"Okay, that's a start, can you recall any specifics?" Voight asked.

"I'll have to check my records to make sure I have all the facts, but I can get them to you."

"Anybody else?" Boden asked as he looked out at the men and women who served under him. None of whom looked too eager to talk. "Let's get something straight. Nobody is ratting Gabby out. She tried to kill Matt Casey, any loyalties you feel towards her, have just gone out the window, we need to know what we are dealing with. If you know something, speak up."

Slowly, a few more hands went up.

* * *

Casey exited the bathroom and saw he had a visitor. He didn't know where Hank had gone but Antonio was standing in the middle of the room, looking like he wasn't sure if he should even be there.

"Antonio."

"How're you feeling, Casey?"

"Like crap," he answered honestly as he went back to his bed and sat down, "the doctors won't let me out of here, they're only letting me get up enough to walk around so I don't get blood clots, for the other 20 hours of the day they want me in this bed and out cold. What're you doing here? What's going on?"

"I...I'm sorry about everything, Casey, I really had no idea what Gabby was doing," Dawson told him.

"I know, I don't blame _you_ ," Casey replied as he drew the blanket up.

"Why not?"

"Because you didn't know, _nobody_ knew, at least I _thought_ nobody knew...all this time Severide's been keeping records..." Casey closed his eyes and shook his head, "I still can't believe it. I'd hoped nobody would find out."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Antonio asked, a tone of betrayal evident in his voice now.

Casey looked at him. "You wouldn't have believed me," he answered simply. "It's your little sister, and I'm the guy that pissed her off, come on Antonio, we both know what you would've thought."

Antonio knew that he was right, but he still couldn't bring himself to accept the truth.

"You should've told me...you should've told somebody."

"Oh yeah right, who?" Casey scoffed.

"You should've told Voight. He believed Severide, he would've believed you," Antonio told him.

"And we'd be right back to where we are," Casey replied, "As soon as you heard about it, 'Not my sister'."

"I'm sorry, alright? I get it, I should've been paying more attention," Antonio said.

There was an awkward silence in the room momentarily. Casey shifted his gaze to the blanket covering him, and finally he said, "No you shouldn't, this is my problem, I should've handled it."

"We're family, Matt," Antonio walked over to the bed.

Casey shook his head. "After this I seriously doubt it."

"No, whatever happens with Gabby, that has nothing to do with it, you are still my family, you got that?" Antonio asked.

Casey looked at him, and finally nodded. "Yeah, I get it. Thanks." He thought of something else and asked, "What _does_ happen with Gabby now? Where is she?"

"You don't know?" Antonio's eyes bugged out.

Casey obliviously shook his head.

"She's in the psyche ward at Med," Casey seemed equally oblivious to the bruises on Antonio's face, but he raised a hand to point out the black eye and matching purple jaw and said, "I said something she didn't like, she attacked me...I was able to have her forcibly committed..."

Casey groaned as he squeezed his eyes shut at that.

"The psychiatrists are running whatever tests they do, find out if she's got a mental problem they need to address...if that's the case..."

"Then it wasn't her fault," Casey opened his eyes in realization, "I _told_ Voight it wasn't."

"That's what we're checking on...I wish you were right," Antonio said. He gestured to the bed and asked Casey, "You mind?"

Casey shook his head and moved over. Antonio sat on the edge of the bed with one leg draped over the rail. The last couple days had taken an extremely emotional toll on him and he felt ready to drop.

"Either she did this on purpose and she's just plain evil, or it's not her fault and she's got some psychotic disorder that everybody missed...as her brother, how am I supposed to win either way? No matter how you look at it, something horrible is wrong with my sister that I can't fix," Antonio explained. "I can't accept that."

"I know," Casey replied, "neither could I."

Antonio turned and looked at him. "I'm sorry, Casey, I'm sorry you had to go through all of this alone."

* * *

"How's Casey?" Voight asked as he returned to Lakeshore and caught up with Kelly in the corridor.

"Last I saw, Antonio was in talking with him," Severide answered as they both took off for Casey's room, "figured I'd give them some privacy, let them say what they had to."

"And he's still there?" Voight asked.

"Didn't get past me, that's all I know," Kelly answered. "How'd Boden take the news?"

"Fairly well given he just rounded everyone up at Molly's to break it to them," Voight answered.

"Damn."

"So, some of them will probably be dropping in before too long," Voight told him.

"Casey's not going to want to see them," Kelly said.

"I know, but you can't watch him by yourself," Voight pointed out, "so you better get used to the idea, and quick. Let's go see what Antonio's up to."

They reached Casey's room and stopped in the doorway as they saw Casey and Antonio both asleep in his bed. Casey laid flat on his back on one side, Antonio had one leg swung over the rail and was sitting up on the other side, and neither of them moved. Voight and Severide looked at each other and shared a mutual look of disbelief. Voight took a step towards the bed to get Antonio up, but Kelly put a hand out to stop him, and instead he lightly stepped over towards the bed, grabbed Antonio's wrist, and working carefully and awkwardly, knelt down and got Antonio settled across his back and maintained a hold on his wrists and one ankle as he and Voight moved away from the bed and quietly exited the hospital room, all the while Antonio never stirred.

"'Waz going on?" Antonio groggily asked as he started to come around.

Kelly stopped and bent over to set Dawson back on his feet.

"How'd it go?" Voight asked.

"Uh...fine, I guess...any update on Gabby?" Antonio asked.

Voight shook his head.

"Why does Casey keep asking about her?" Kelly asked.

"I'm sure you can figure it out, Severide," Voight told him.

Kelly's eyes widened, "You don't mean that he still-"

"Abusive relationships are never cut and dry, we see it with battered women all the time, no matter what, they take him back."

"Yeah, because they don't have a choice," Kelly said.

"In their mind they don't have a choice...because their husbands have had years to mentally undo everything about them so they can't imagine a life without them, and Gabby's had plenty of time to fuck with Casey's mind, we don't know how he's thinking right now," Voight explained. "We may have to have _him_ subjected to a psyche eval."

"He'll never go for that," Kelly told the sergeant.

"Maybe if we could get that shrink at Med to come over here, Doctor Charles," Antonio thought.

"Casey knows him but he won't talk to him either," Severide responded.

"He might if he doesn't think he has a choice," Voight told both of them. In remark to their curious expressions he pointed out, "All Casey wants to do is go home, the doctors won't let him go until his stats improve, in the meantime he could probably be persuaded that he has to talk to a psychiatrist as part of his release."

"That's cruel," Kelly said.

Voight looked at him, and said simply, but firmly, "We saved his life, it won't count for much if we can't save the rest of him. To do that, we may very well have to resort to a lot of unpleasant things. It's all in his best interest, Severide, and hopefully Matt will reach a point someday where he will be able to realize that."


	8. Chapter 8

Casey woke up alone. He knew he'd slept a long time but he still felt exhausted, so he just lay in his bed and looked around the room, debating with himself whether it was actually worth getting up, or if he should just stay where he was. He wanted to go home.

He hadn't been aware of anybody outside his room, but suddenly he heard somebody calling his name and saw Boden entering the room.

"Chief!" Casey sank back against the mattress and all the color vanished from his face as his eyes widened in terror.

Boden saw the look of sheer panic on the lieutenant's face, and calmly assured Casey, "It's alright, I know, Casey, I know what happened." He made his way to the bed and lightly gripped Matt's shoulders to get his attention, "I know what happened, Casey, I'm sorry that none of us realized what was going on."

"Who...wha...how'd you find out? Who told you?" Casey asked.

"That's not important. What're the doctors saying, Matt?"

Casey's eyes were still wide with panic and he didn't seem to hear Boden, instead he slightly shook his head and repeated almost mechanically, "I'm sorry, Chief, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

"Hey, hey, shhhh," Boden said barely above a whisper, "Casey, you don't have anything to apologize for, you didn't do anything wrong and everybody knows it."

"I didn't want anyone to know," Casey confessed.

"I know, Matt."

"Does everyone know?"

Boden merely nodded in answer. Casey turned on his side, trying to shut out what he'd just learned.

"What do the doctors say, Matt?"

"They won't let me come home," Casey whined.

"They say why?"

Casey let out a simultaneous whining groan.

"Casey?"

"I want to go home."

Boden crouched beside the bed and placed a sympathetic hand on the back of Casey's head, "I understand that, Matt, but you have to do what the doctors say."

Casey looked through the corners of his eyes at something, then he looked up at Wallace and said uncertainly, "Chief?"

"What is it?"

"I don't...want to see the others...please, tell them not to come," Casey said reluctantly.

Whatever was going through Boden's mind, he just gave a small reassuring smile and told his lieutenant, "When you're ready, they will be too. Your whole family at 51 is behind you, Casey."

Casey offered a small smile in response, once Wallace left the room and he was alone again, Casey murmured to himself, "Not _all_."

* * *

Severide had seen Boden leaving Casey's room, and decided to wait a few minutes and give Casey time to do whatever it was he needed to do, before he went to see how he was doing. When he stepped into the room, the bed was empty.

"Casey?" Kelly _knew_ Matt hadn't walked out of there, he looked around the room, "Casey? You here?"

His answer was a small, muffled sound behind the bathroom door. Kelly went over to it and stepped in, and saw the shower curtain had been pulled shut, but he was still able to make out a pair of feet revealed under it.

"Casey, you alright?"

Kelly pulled the curtain back and saw Casey, still wearing a hospital gown, sitting on the floor with his back to the tiled wall and his knees drawn to his chest and his face pressed against his knees as he tried, and failed, to conceal the sounds he was making as his whole body trembled in time with the quiet sobs escaping him.

"What's wrong, Casey?" Kelly crouched down to be closer to his current height.

Casey didn't pick his head up but he managed to stop shaking long enough to say, his voice weak but steady, "Boden was just here."

"I know."

"I didn't want...why did they have to find out?"

"There wasn't much choice, Casey," Kelly pointed out.

Matt's body went into another series of tremors as he started crying again.

Kelly didn't have any idea how to make the current situation any less awkward for either of them, and since he couldn't, he decided to steer into the skid. He inched his way into the shower beside Casey and pulled the blonde man over towards him and gently maneuvered Casey to sit on his legs and lean back against him.

"Casey, it's going to be alright."

"No it's not," Casey responded. "Everything's screwed up. My whole life is a mess."

"Casey," Kelly tightened his arms around Casey's chest, "You are still too exhausted to think straight, you need to get some rest, you'll be able to concentrate better then, and everything won't seem as hopeless."

The groan that escaped Casey's lips didn't sound convinced of that.

"Everything's going to be fine, Casey, just take it easy."

"No it's not," Casey repeated.

"Casey, trust me, it's going to be okay."

"I want to go home," Casey moaned.

"I know, buddy."

"Take me...please take me home," Casey shifted and half turned and pressed his head against Severide's shoulder and tiredly repeated over and over, "please take me home, please, I want to go home."

Severide wrapped one arm over Casey's shoulders and told him, "I know you do, Casey, but you've got to stick it out here a little longer."

"No," Casey groaned into his shoulder, "take me home, please."

"Why do you want to go home?"

"I don't want to be here...I want to sleep in...not a hospital bed."

"Would you rather come home with me?" Kelly asked.

"Just get me out of here, please."

"I can do that, if you want to stay at my place we can do that...as soon as the doctors say you can leave."

Casey groaned in frustration.

"It's not going to be that bad, Casey, you just need to get some rest and they'll let you go home," Kelly told him.

It slowly occurred to Severide that Casey had gotten quiet, he'd stopped trembling.

"Come on," Kelly patted him on the back. "Let's go for a walk and then we'll get you back in bed."

Casey groaned in protest but he slowly got to his feet so Severide could get up as well.

* * *

The two lieutenants made the rounds through the hospital corridors so Casey could stretch his legs, stopped in the cafeteria to get something to eat, then went back to Casey's hospital room. As soon as they were in the door, Severide grabbed Casey around the back and under the knees and lifted him up in his arms and carried him over to the bed.

"Not funny," Casey told him.

"Hey, I have to have some fun with you," Severide responded, "I can only get so much entertainment from watching you sleep."

Casey grumbled as Kelly sat him down on the bed. "You don't have to stay here with me."

"Maybe not but I'm going to anyway, so deal with it," Kelly told him.

Casey pulled up the blanket and told him, "I really _do_ appreciate what you've done."

"Don't thank me," Severide responded. More seriously he told Casey, "I should've done something sooner, Casey, I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

"Not yours either."

"I...I know."

"You know that only leaves one person."

"I can't...I can't accept that," Casey told him. "Something _has_ to be wrong."

"It is, Gabby tried to kill you, Matt," Kelly reminded him. Casey closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to shut it out, Kelly continued to probe, carefully. "I know you don't want to admit it, but if she really loved you she never would've done what she did. I don't care what the doctors find, she's responsible."

Casey cupped a hand around his jaw as tears started rolling down from his eyes.

"I know," Kelly said softly as he reached over and hugged Casey, "I know you still love her, Casey, she is not worth it."

"She's my wife."

"Who tried to kill you. Casey, you cannot stay with someone like that, and you know it."

Casey let out a sighing sob as he pressed his face against Kelly's shoulder. Severide scowled to himself as he rubbed Casey's back and told him, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."

Casey pressed his body against Severide's so tightly it was as if he was trying to push past him entirely. Instead he latched his arms around Severide's back and desperately clung to him. Kelly tightened his own hold on Casey and felt his own eyes starting to sting as he told him, "Don't cry, Casey, it's going to be alright, don't cry."

"What the hell is going on in here?" Kelly looked up and saw Voight standing in the doorway.

Kelly looked at the Intelligence sergeant and just shook his head. He didn't know where to start.

Voight went over to the bed and told Severide firmly, "Let go of him."

"What?" Kelly asked.

"Let-go-of-him," Voight repeated as he stepped over towards the bed.

Before Severide could even figure out what was going on, Casey screamed at the top of his lungs as Voight tried to pull him away from Kelly. The next few seconds passed in a blur and the next thing Severide knew, Voight had him on the floor and was using his own weight as a barrier between he and Casey, who at the moment had no fight left in him.

"What the hell did you do, Severide?" he demanded to know.

Kelly looked up and took in Casey's hysterical condition and realized Voight must've thought he hurt him...and he realized he had, he'd pushed too hard on the subject of Gabby too soon and it was more than Matt could handle right now.

"Get out of here, Kelly," Voight told him as he offered a hand and pulled the Squad lieutenant to his feet. "You can see him tomorrow."

"I...I didn't mean..."

The look Voight shot him told him he wasn't asking. Kelly tried to reach past Voight to touch Casey and tell him he was sorry, that he'd be back in the morning, something, but Hank blocked him, and truth be told Severide wasn't sure Casey was interested in hearing what he had to say after what just happened. Defeated, Kelly turned and walked out of the hospital room.

"What'd he do, Casey?" Voight asked once Kelly was gone.

Casey was clearly trying with all he had to pull himself together and stop crying so he could answer, but he couldn't. Voight went over and shut the door, then he pulled the privacy curtain shut, and Casey's eyes widened and felt pins and needles running down his spine. Voight stepped back towards the bed and Casey closed his eyes as if bracing himself, he felt Voight's hand on his head and he flinched under the touch, unable to stop the tremors running through his body or the sounds of utter dread escaping from his throat.

Voight didn't say anything and instead let Casey figure out for himself that he wasn't about to be hit, when that finally occurred to him, he stopped shaking, but he couldn't stop the sobs coming up from his chest, or the tears from rolling down his face.

"I know Severide's your best friend, and he's trying to help, and I know this is hard on him too, but he was wrong," Voight told him in an eerily soft tone.

Hank knew he'd been out of line and overreacted, he'd apologize to Severide the next day when he came back to the hospital. Right now though his focus was on Casey.

"I know how you are, Matt," he told the younger man he currently towered over, "you keep everything from the people you work with, your boss, and I understand it. And I know you have kept more bottled up in the last few months than anybody should have to. Nobody can see you now, nobody can hear you."

Casey felt the hand on top of his head brush over his forehead, and though he knew he wasn't in danger, he couldn't stop himself from grimacing under the touch, but he didn't dare ask Voight to stop.

Hank stood over the lieutenant, looked him in the eyes when Casey could finally bring himself to open them, and told him, "You get out everything you have to cry about, nobody's going to bother you."

Casey felt his chest heaving and felt his throat tighten even more with tears. Voight sat beside the bed and alternated between gripping Casey's hand in his own and carefully stroking over the top and back of Casey's head as he lay in the bed and cried for the next two hours. When Matt finally started to calm down, Voight got Casey to drink some water, then got a washrag from the bathroom and washed his face, and didn't miss the small sounds in Casey's throat as he felt the cold water against his skin and his sore eyes.

"That's better," Voight said as he set the cloth aside. He looked Casey in his bloodshot eyes and told him, "I know this is hard for you, Matt, but you're going to get over this."

For some reason that simple statement just made Casey start crying again, he tried to speak but only a choked sob worked loose as his body started trembling again.

Hank had already guessed it was going to be a long night. He told Casey, "You know the drill, move over."

Once again Voight climbed into bed with Casey, and put his arm around Matt and settled the blonde's neck in the crook of his arm and held him tight as he sobbed and shook.

"Easy, easy," Voight told the younger man. A sharp breath escaped Casey that sounded like he was starting to hyperventilate. Voight remained calm as he told Matt, "Breathe, Casey...take a deep breath for me," he listened as a long, strained breath worked its way in and out of Casey's body and he nodded in approval, "You're alright."

Voight felt Casey's arms squeeze their way around his ribs to his back and he clung tightly to the Intelligence sergeant. Hank got it, he knew if Casey felt he had any choices, he wouldn't be turning to Voight of all people for comfort, as it was there wasn't anyone else right now, and he needed somebody. It was obvious how much damage Gabby had done to him emotionally, Voight had seen it happen plenty of times before with victims of domestic abuse. After finally being liberated from their abusers, most didn't want any human contact with anybody, but there were always some who just couldn't stand another minute of physical or emotional isolation. Over the years he'd seen more than a few women fall in love with the cops who got them out of their home, the doctors or male nurses who treated them at the hospital, their 'rescuers', and he'd seen battered women go on to become police officers, EMS, nurses, their stories never just ended at the point they finally escaped the abuse. And Casey's story wouldn't end here either. It would be hard, but he'd move on from this and someday, hopefully before too long, be able to put his life back together. For now, Voight resigned himself to laying in the hospital bed, holding Casey and offering what little comfort he could as the firefighter slowly cried himself to sleep.

* * *

Voight heard the curtain being pulled back and thought it was a nurse doing a bed inspection. He opened his eyes and saw that it was morning, and Severide was standing by the bed with, to Voight, a very amusing look on his face. Hank turned his head and saw Casey curled beside him, his head resting on Voight's shoulder, which explained why half his body felt paralyzed.

"Wake up, Casey, you got a visitor," he said as he nudged the sleeping lieutenant.

"Hmm?" Casey scrunched his eyes shut even tighter, then reluctantly opened them and slowly rolled over, and when he saw Severide, his eyes bulged wide open.

"Kelly!" Matt shot up in the bed and threw his arms around Severide and held onto him very tightly.

"How're you feeling, buddy?" Kelly asked as he bent down to return the hug.

Voight took that opportunity to get out of the bed and use the restroom, he didn't know how long he'd been in that bed but his kidneys felt about ready to explode. When he left the bathroom, he told Casey, "I need to speak to him for a minute," grabbed Severide by the collar of his shirt and jerked him towards the door.

"What the hell are you doing?" Kelly demanded to know as Voight hauled him out into the corridor.

"Look, Kelly, I'm sorry about last night, but you were out of line with Casey," Voight told him as he let go of the Squad lieutenant.

"I...know...I didn't mean to upset him."

"That was your first mistake...but you need to be careful what you say to him."

"Huh?"

"Look, you know better than anybody that Casey's been going through everything alone, there wasn't anybody he could talk to, anybody he could trust, and he couldn't get away from Gabby on the job. You feeling me?" Voight asked. To drive the point home he told Severide, "He didn't stop crying until 2 this morning...I can appreciate how hard this is for you to witness, but you can't ask him to stifle himself to make it easier for you."

"I didn't...I..."

"I know, it's a reflex, but it's wrong, Kelly, it doesn't work...Casey finally feels safe enough he _can_ go to pieces...when that happens you need to let him," Voight told him. "You got it?"

Kelly merely nodded, not able to even form a sentence at that moment.

"By the way, something I've been wondering," Voight said to him. "Give me your phone."

Kelly did. "Why?"

Voight pulled up the first picture he'd taken of Casey, the bloodbath in the bathroom. "This was when you first suspected he was being abused...what made you think to take a picture of it?"

Kelly looked at it and explained, "I didn't put it together until he came around, and he wouldn't tell me what happened. At the time I thought...if we need to get him to the hospital, the doctors might be able to go on this, I don't think I could describe that to anybody who wasn't there and do it justice."

Voight nodded and handed Severide back his phone.

"Alright," Voight slapped him on the arm, "go back there, keep him company."

* * *

Voight returned to Lakeshore later that day, and found Casey back in the bed asleep, and Severide sitting next to the bed, awake this time. He jerked in his seat when he saw Voight in the doorway, the Intelligence sergeant merely gestured for Kelly to come out there, he did.

"How long's he been asleep?" Voight whispered.

"Since lunch, what's going on?" Kelly asked.

"I just got a message from Dr. Charles at Med, he wants to see us to tell us what they found out with Gabby," Voight explained.

"Any idea what it is?" Severide anxiously inquired.

Hank shook his head and said only, "You want in?"

"Hell yeah, I want to know what's going on around here," Kelly answered.

"Hey, Hank."

The two men turned and saw Antonio heading their way.

"I got your message, what's going on?" Dawson asked.

"We're wanted at Med," Voight told him..

"What about Casey?" Severide asked, not really wanting to leave him alone.

"Olinsky's coming down, he'll keep an eye on him while we're gone," Hank answered. He turned and looked to Severide who had a confused expression on his face. "You got a problem with that?"

Kelly blinked, "Uh, no."

"Matt'll be fine, let's go."

* * *

Dr. Charles entered the room and addressed the three men staring at him.

"There's no easy answer on this one," he began as he took off his glasses.

"What does that mean?" Severide asked.

"Well we can rule out schizophrenia, but Gabby is borderline for several conditions," Daniel explained, "bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and intermittent explosive disorder."

"What does _that_ mean?" Antonio asked.

Dr. Charles took in a breath and explained, "Intermittent explosive disorder means that Gabby suffers repeated episodes of sudden aggression which includes physically and verbally violent outbursts that are not justified or even proportionate to whatever it is that sets her off."

"Sounds like we have a winner," Kelly dryly commented.

"Dr. Charles, do _any_ of these conditions impair her ability to restrain herself?" Voight asked.

"Patients with IED do have a notably harder time controlling their actions than other people, but if you're asking is Gabby legally competent? Yes, she knows what she's doing is wrong, but that's not enough to stop her...remorse following outbursts is not uncommon for patients with this disorder...but as soon as something sets them off again, nothing changes. Episodes of violence aren't generally regular, there can be periods of days, weeks, months in between them...but..."

"But what?" Antonio asked.

"During the in between periods, the patient is still easily aggravated and are very likely to verbally abuse people, they scream, they shout, they have tantrums, they make threats, arguments are easily heated...and judging by the looks on your faces, I'm guessing this isn't news to you."

"That would explain a _lot_ ," Kelly answered. "Everything always has to be Gabby's way, or else."

"Or else what?" Daniel asked.

"She finds a way to make the lives of everybody who disagrees with her a living hell," Severide answered.

"Anything violent?"

"Us? No, but..." Severide was suddenly lost in thought.

"What is it?" Voight asked.

"Back when Gabby was a firefighter, we were on a call and some guy was insulting her, and she started screaming at him and was going to beat the hell out of him with a Halligan, turns out the guy was paid to provoke us, make 51 look bad...she bought it hook, line, and sinker," Kelly explained. "I'm not saying there aren't times firefighters lash out, as much as people badmouth us, it happens, but she was just ruthless." All eyes were on him as he told them, "I really think she could've beaten that guy to death and not even cared."

"It would've given her some sense of relief, mentally _and_ physically," Dr. Charles said. "People with IED have physical symptoms that precede their outbursts, tremors, tingling sensations, the chest tightens, heart palpitations, a feeling of pressure in the head...it all builds up and...after they've committed their acts of violence, they experience relief, fatigue...when they do feel remorse, it tends to come later on."

"Okay, tell me something," Voight addressed the psychiatrist, "is this disorder beyond her control?"

"It's a lot of work but with therapy and medication, Gabby _could_ learn how to live with it without giving in to her violent impulses," Dr. Charles said.

"Medications?" Antonio repeated. "What does that mean? What kind of medications?"

"She'd have to abstain from alcohol and be put on antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication, mood stabilizers and anti-convulsants," Dr. Charles told him.

"God..." Antonio barely croaked out in a whisper.

"Dr. Charles...what causes this disorder?" Voight asked. "Does anybody know?"

"There are common patterns...it's generally found in people under 35, people who grew up in abusive households, who themselves experienced a physical or mental trauma, more often they're men, but women aren't immune. It could be genetic...it could just be that her brain was wired different before she was born, it's been known to happen...but I feel a need to ask, Antonio..."

"Huh?" Antonio looked at him and did a double take, then shook his head, "No way, you can forget it...our home life might not have been perfect but it wasn't abusive. My father never laid a hand on my mother."

"Understood, it's just that children who grow up in violent households often repeat the patterns they were exposed to. Instinctively they know what they witnessed was wrong, but all children look to their parents for gender and social cues on what is normal and acceptable behavior."

"Antonio," Kelly thought of something. "What about your mother?"

"What about..." Antonio's whole body reeled as the realization of Severide's question washed over him. "No, no-no-no-no-no, my father never hit my mother, and my mother sure as hell never hit my father."

"You're sure about that?" Voight asked.

Antonio looked at his boss, and at Kelly, "Is everybody around here nuts?"

"You were older, Antonio, you weren't always there when Gabby was growing up," Kelly pointed out.

"And...if Gabby was the sole witness to the abuse, it would've left her with the impression that hitting men in relationships was to some degree normal, at the very least acceptable," Dr. Charles added.

Antonio looked like he was having a spike driven between his eyes as he took this newfound information in.

"Wait a minute..." Kelly thought of something, "Antonio, remember what your padre said at the anniversary party?"

Antonio turned his head so quick he almost got a whiplash, and glared at Kelly.

"What is it?" Voight asked.

"Ramone isn't even Gabby's real father," Kelly said before Antonio could cut him off. "He found out his wife cheated on him, and when they divorced he said he should've done it when it first happened."

"That puts a slightly different perspective on it," Dr. Charles told the men. "Is there any way to find out who Gabby's biological father is?"

Antonio shook his head. "No, he never said."

"We could take her DNA and enter it into the system and see if a match comes up to somebody who's been arrested," Voight suggested, "since she's not insane she _can_ be placed in police custody now."

Antonio lowered his head and shook it, looking every bit like life as he knew it was over.

"What good would it do?" Kelly asked. "Maybe we find the guy, maybe her dad really is a violent bastard, she never knew him, what's the point?"

"Well it's the old nature/nurture debate," Dr. Charles said. "All the time kids grow up never knowing their birth parents but they exhibit the same behavioral characteristics their mothers and fathers show, and the area on can violence be inherited is still a big gray area we don't know much about yet. It's possible, but again, it still doesn't excuse her behavior, she still knows it's wrong, but she doesn't let that stop her."

"But why would it only happen now with Casey?" Kelly asked. "She was with other guys before him and...I'm pretty sure she never did anything like this to them."

"She didn't," Voight said.

"How do you know?" Kelly asked.

"Because I contacted that guy Mills that used to work at 51. _And_ I've been having everybody still working there filling in some blanks on Gabby's behavior over the years...everybody can recall some violent outbursts, mostly verbal, some physical, but never to anybody else at the House, and nobody else that she dated while on the job, least of all that anybody could remember."

"So what's it all mean?" Antonio asked.

"Remember I said this wasn't an easy case," Dr. Charles told the men, "Gabby has several markers pointing to IED, but generally it doesn't co-exist with other psychological disorders. She's a likely candidate for all of the ones mentioned, but that doesn't equal a diagnosis."

"So what do you think it is?" Voight asked.

"I spoke with her about several things as I evaluated her," Daniel told them, "and going through her history, I think the breaking point for her psyche was Leslie Shay's untimely death."

Kelly absently taking in a pained breath at the mention of Shay was not missed by the two cops and the doctor.

"I understand you two were good friends, I'm sorry, Kelly."

"But that...that was almost three years ago," Severide pointed out.

"I think Gabby has been in a gradual downward spiral since then and I don't believe she ever received sufficient counseling to deal with her grief," Dr. Charles said. "The impression I got was that Shay kind of pulled the reins on their friendship and when she saw things starting to waver, kept Gabby from crossing over the line too much...once she wasn't around to keep things under control, Gabby just lost it. But she had the presence of mind to take her anger issues out on the one person she _knew_ wouldn't call it to anyone else's attention, and wouldn't have it in him to try to stop her. Her husband."

Kelly felt like he was in shock. He'd had the longest to realize that Gabby truly was not his friend, anything he thought was between them from all the years on the job as 'family', was gone out the window. But he still felt himself between the proverbial rock and a hard place as he asked, "How do we explain this one to Casey?"

"I'll tell him," Voight said as he stood up. "He's used to getting bad news from me already." He extended his hand to Dr. Charles and said, "Thank you, Daniel...this is a hard thing to deal with, but we had to know."

"I'm sorry I couldn't give you better news," the psychiatrist said as they shook hands.

"Yeah well, that's life," Voight said.


	9. Chapter 9

"I'll catch up in a minute," Kelly told the two cops as they headed for the door.

"Okay, we'll wait at the front," Hank replied.

"Something on your mind, Kelly?" Dr. Charles asked.

"Yeah, it's about Casey. I'm not really sure how to explain it without sounding weird."

"Well that's what I'm here for, why don't you just start where you can and take it from there?"

"Okay...well...you know what happened between Voight and Casey a few years ago?"

"Uh, not really."

"Well it was bad, _really_ bad, and even though we've had to work with Voight and his people since then...I don't think Casey can ever get over what Voight did to him."

"But you went to him with your concerns," Dr. Charles pointed out.

"Yeah...I thought he was my best bet...keep Antonio out of it and take what I said seriously," Kelly explained.

"So what's the problem?"

"Well...when I went to Lakeshore the other day, he and Casey were in bed together..." Dr. Charles' eyebrows rose. "Not like _that_. But...I just...any other time, Casey wouldn't want Voight anywhere near him...and he didn't want anyone else from 51 to come and see him...so I don't really get why he's okay being around Voight all of a sudden."

"Okay, you said 'not like _that_ ', so what then _were_ they doing?" Dr. Charles asked.

Kelly let out a frustrated huff and said, "It's gonna sound stupid."

Daniel shrugged, "Maybe it won't sound as stupid out in the open."

"It'll sound _more_ stupid," Kelly insisted. But he told Dr. Charles anyway.

Daniel took it all in and thought about it for a minute, and he said to Kelly, "And you sense this as a threat on your relationship with Casey?"

"A threat? Relations-no," Kelly shook his head. "That's not what it is at all."

Dr. Charles made a sound that said he was less than convinced. "You were pretty upset at being thrown out of the room last night, and it was just Casey left alone with Voight, right?"

"He shouldn't have done that."

"And they were in bed again this morning, how did that make you feel?"

"Why do shrinks always ask that?" Kelly wanted to know.

"Kelly...how old is Matt?"

"36, why?"

"And did you know that Sergeant Voight is 57?"

"No, I didn't, what's that got to do with anything?" Kelly asked.

"Casey's father was murdered when he was 17, and his mom went to prison at the same time, correct?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"And there was no other family at the time for support?"

"Not really, but what's it all mean?"

"It's just possible that right now, when Matt is so vulnerable, he's feeling a paternal bond between he and Sergeant Voight."

Kelly's eyes bugged out. "That's nuts."

"Even so, Hank Voight _is_ old enough he could be Casey's father...Voight _is_ a father, and it could be that right now he's seeing some of his own son in Matt. The old parental instincts don't die out, trust me..."

"But what about Casey?"

"All you have to do is look at his track record and you'll get that answer," Dr. Charles told him. "Abusive spouses know what they're doing, they dominate, they control, they isolate, physically, mentally, emotionally...gradually they chip away at everything their victims ever knew, so the only normal they know from there on out, is the abuse. They are so terrified to leave because by that time, their batterers actually have them convinced that they will never find anybody who treats them any better than they do. Understandably, Casey was already so starved for any affection, when faced with this threat, he chose to stay with what he at least knew and could anticipate would happen, than risk winding up alone again."

Kelly shook his head, "That's just it...I know how it works, but it doesn't make sense. Casey was with Hallie for years and she never treated him like that, he had to know..."

"Hallie was murdered, and Gabby was there for Casey when he had nobody and was alone again. He'd spent most of his life alone, some people would rather do _anything_ just as long as it means having _somebody_ with them. As bad as the abuse was, Casey knew that somewhere in between, Gabby would be nice and loving again, and to him, it was worth all the pain, to get that crumb of affection."

"And now?" Kelly asked.

"That supply has been cut off, and Casey knows it..."

"Wait..." something occurred to Kelly, "all the times he kept asking where she was...you mean..."

"Might not be that different from an addict trying to get a fix, he knows it'll kill him but he needs it anyway, she made sure that was all he knew for years," Dr. Charles said.

"My God," Kelly barely choked out.

"I'd heard what happened when they took him a couple days ago," Dr. Charles told Severide. "Matt Casey isn't just starved for sleep, he's starved for basic human contact, any non-threatening physical touch, he needs as much of it right now as he can get from anybody he trusts enough to give it."

"He'd trust Voight...but not the guys from 51?" Kelly asked in disbelief.

"Try and see it from Casey's perspective...Voight saved him when Gabby was trying to kill him, Voight rode with him to the hospital, stayed by his side until you could arrive, he made sure Casey wasn't alone, any time you weren't there he made sure Casey wasn't alone, that was a very critical time for Matt, and he's not going to forget it," Daniel explained.

"I guess that makes sense," Kelly admitted reluctantly, "but it still doesn't make sense to me."

"The thing you need to remember, Kelly, is right now Casey needs more physical contact than one person can offer...I know you'd just be inclined to deny it, but you don't have to worry about being replaced by Voight. If anything _does_ exist between the two of them right now, it can't take anything away from the relationship you two have."

"That word again," Kelly said.

Dr. Charles gave a small, knowing smile. "People always get nervous when a psychiatrist uses 'that word', okay...your friendship. Almost 20 years, right? That's a hard record to beat."

"Yeah, but Gabby managed to wriggle her way through that as well," Kelly said. "He's my best friend, and he couldn't even tell me what was going on."

"I can understand how frustrating that would be...but shoe on the other foot, Kelly, would you tell him? _Could_ you tell him?" Daniel asked.

Kelly couldn't answer because he'd never stopped to think about it.

"Can I ask how long he's going to...how long he'll..."

"Matt has years of psychological abuse to work through...ideally I'd like to get him started on therapy to come to terms with it...of course, that has to be his decision," Dr. Charles said.

"If he doesn't?"

"It will be harder for him to recover, but not impossible," Daniel told him.

"But when he's released from the hospital, will somebody have to stay with him?" Kelly asked.

"I think that would be in his best interest," Daniel said.

"And in the meantime?"

"He needs to know he's not alone, physically or emotionally," Dr. Charles said. "He needs to see that Gabby was wrong, intellectually he knows that but he needs reassurance, he's in a very vulnerable place right now and needs to know that he _can_ survive without her, because he still has people around him who love and support him. He needs as much close contact as he can get right now, adapt back to being around people who aren't trying to hurt him."

* * *

Voight watched the expression on Casey's face as he took in the news that Hank had just told him. He stood by the door of the hospital room with one foot pressed back against the wall as he looked at the lieutenant. The pain was obvious, but there wasn't much shock. If Voight had to guess, a large part of what had happened last night had been Casey finally convincing himself of what they now all knew to be the truth. Gabby was physically and mentally in control of her actions, and she _chose_ to beat the hell out of him and try to kill him.

"I'm sorry, Matt," Voight finished what he came to say.

Kelly sat on the edge of the bed with one leg standing on the floor, and watched Casey as the blonde lieutenant slowly drew into himself as he started crying again. Antonio had seated himself on the other side of the bed since they didn't have any idea how to expect Casey to react when they told him, and it cut off his chances of jumping out of the bed and doing something drastic.

Casey wrung his hands together and drew his head down to his chest, a quiet sob broke loose. Kelly put his arm around Casey and pulled the man against him and said into his ear, "I'm sorry, buddy." Antonio moved in closer from the other side, put a hand on Casey's shoulder and said something too low for the others to make out.

Voight stood back and watched this for a couple minutes before he said to Antonio and Severide, "Give us a minute."

Reluctantly, Severide pulled away from Casey, as did Antonio, and they walked out of the room. Voight closed the door behind them, and went over to the bed and looked at Casey. Casey turned and looked at him uncertainly. Voight merely stood there with his arms open, Casey leaned over and latched onto him, a hiccuping spasm wracking through his body as he cried.

"Okay, it's okay," Voight said softly as he hugged the younger man, "we'll get it figured out. I'm sorry, Casey, I know you were hoping it'd be different."

Casey pressed the side of his face against Voight's chest and choked out in between sobs, "Why did she do it? I loved her...I still do...why did she hurt me? Why did she try to kill me?"

Voight sighed and shook his head, "I don't know, I wish I did."

"W-w-wha...what happens n-now?" Casey asked.

"That's up to you," Voight told him. "This isn't about what Kelly wants, it's not about what Antonio wants...you want to press charges, have her put in jail, taken to trial, we will do that. If you don't...all you have to do is say so. It's what you want, Casey. All you got to do is tell me. But we got enough to take to the State's Attorney, the pictures, the video, Gabby attacking Antonio, the doctor's diagnosis..."

"What video?"

"What?" Voight asked.

Casey pulled away from him and asked, "What video?"

Voight's eyes widened.

"Oh my God...you didn't know."

Casey shook his head. "What video?"

* * *

Voight left Casey's room and found Severide and Antonio standing at the corner of the hall.

"What happens now?" Severide asked.

"Stay with Casey," Voight said simply.

"What're you gonna do, Hank?" Antonio asked.

Voight looked at him, and merely answered, "Stay with Severide."

"Hank..."

"Antonio...trust me."

Hank saw the younger cop's eyes glaze over with tears as he realized where they stood now. Voight pulled Antonio into a tight hug and clapped him on the back and said only, "Trust me...stay here."

* * *

Gabby Dawson walked out of Chicago Med and had walked two blocks from the hospital in the dead of night, only the street lamps and the traffic lights to see by. She was turning the corner when she heard a familiar siren blare behind her and she saw a black car with blue lights flashing pull up at the curb beside her. The passenger side window moved down and she saw Voight behind the wheel.

"Get in," he told her.

"You can't keep harassing me, Voight," she told him.

Voight got out of the car, slammed his door and walked around towards her and said, "Maybe you forgot, I'm a sergeant, I can do _anything_ I want. Now you're coming with me one of two ways, either in the passenger seat, or in the trunk." Gabby's eyes shifted from side to side and he told her, "And don't even _think_ about trying to run, or screaming for help." He offered a small, sardonic smirk and pointed out, "This is Chicago, _nobody_ wants to get involved. You know that."

Gabby was starting to realize she didn't have much choice. She stalked past Voight and threw the door open to get in.

"That was easy," Voight commented as he went back around to the driver's side and slammed his door shut.

They sat there for a moment in an ominous silence. Finally Gabby asked, "What're you gonna do?"

"I said I'd handle this...and I'm gonna," Voight said as he put the car in drive and pulled out of there.

* * *

Gabby looked out at the abandoned string of buildings and she asked as Voight stopped the car, "Why'd you bring me here?"

"Get out," Voight said. "Let's take a little walk."

Gabby looked at him anxiously, but realized her options were severely limited. She opened the door on her side and got out. Voight pointed to a gap between two buildings and she reluctantly took the hint.

"What's going on? What are you doing?" she demanded to know, trying to hide the terror in her voice.

"Just a little friendly discussion," Voight said nonchalantly.

Suddenly everything Antonio and Casey had warned Gabby about years ago about getting involved with Voight or crossing him, started running through her head.

As they reached the corner of two buildings, Gabby turned to Voight and started to ask, "What are" but the rest of it was cut off by a strained gasp as she felt his hands close around her throat. Voight pushed her back into the alley between the two buildings and he shoved her back against the side of the brick building, hard.

"Good, now I have your attention," he said with just a hint of malice in his tone.

Gabby gasped for air and tried to pull his hands off her throat, but with no success. Her eyes with wide with fear.

"Getting a little scared, huh? Good," Voight was beaming from ear to ear now as he told her, "Now you're getting an idea what it was like for Casey." He tightened his grip harder. Gabby tried to kick him, to claw him in the face, but nothing worked.

"Now get this through your psychotic little head, because I'm only going to say it once," Voight said as he pushed her back and scraped the back of her head against the bricks. "The doctors say you know damn well what you're doing, so since you are legally competent, you are going to get your ass out of _my_ city, and don't ever show your face around here again. Because if you do, if I find out you went anywhere near Matt Casey again, or anyone else from 51," his eyes were gleaming as he told her, "I _will_ find you. I'll track you down, and then...I'm going to show you a part of Chicago you've never seen, and only _one_ of us is gonna come back. You got me?" He jerked her by the neck so her head bobbed in a mocking nod. Gabby gasped as she tried to breathe but instead it sounded like she was choking on a piece of plastic shoved down her throat. Voight shoved Gabby back against the wall with one strong push and let go of her. Gabby hit the wall and got out a pained noise as she loudly sucked in air and raised a hand to her throat.

"You have 24 hours to get out of Chicago, or I'm gonna come looking for you," Voight told her as he inched his way into her face. "And I _will_ find you...you know my reputation in this city, I can assure you it's _all_ true. Now GET OUT!"

With a yelp, Gabby moved away from the wall and took off running. Voight followed her shadows cast upon the walls by the street lights, and after a while the clatter of her footsteps faded into the darkness.

Voight headed back to his car, and just as he opened the door to get in, he looked and saw a shadow by the corner. Before he said anything, he saw the figure step into the light. It was Antonio.

"I told you to stay put," Hank told him.

Antonio walked up to him and said, "It's still my sister, Hank, I _had_ to know..."

Hank looked at Dawson and shook his head sympathetically, "Sorry, bro...there's no way she can come back to Chicago, she will always be a threat to Casey."

"I know," Antonio nodded glumly.

"Casey didn't want to go through with a trial, if he had, we could've locked her up and made sure she couldn't get to him, but I don't think anybody can blame him for not wanting the whole city of Chicago to know what he's been put through," Voight said.

"What happened?" Antonio asked. He'd seen the condition Casey was in at the hospital, he knew that wasn't just because of Dr. Charles' findings.

"Casey didn't know we had a video of the abuse," Voight answered. "I showed him..."

"And...he fell apart," Antonio drew the natural conclusion.

"He begged me not to show it to anyone else, not the State's Attorney...I can respect that," Voight said. "How was he when you left?"

Antonio shook his head. "Kelly's staying with him, but..."

Voight nodded. "Come on, let's go."

* * *

When they returned to Lakeshore, a very unusual sight met both cops' eyes before they even reached Casey's room. The whole corridor leading to his hospital room was filled with people sitting against the walls sleeping, and it was the whole crew from 51. Otis and Cruz leaned against one wall with their knees to their chests, their heads sloped to opposite sides, along the other wall, Tony's head slumped on his shoulder, Capp's legs stuck straight out in the middle of the floor and he had his head tilted back against the wall. Brett was curled up along the left side wall with her jacket bundled around herself, Herrmann had his head dropped to his knees. Both of the Intelligence cops stepped lightly to avoid waking anybody up, they reached the door and looked in, and saw Wallace sleeping in the chair by the bed, and Casey and Severide both asleep in the bed, Severide sitting almost straight up, Casey with his head buried in Kelly's ribs and an arm draped over Kelly's waist.

Voight and Antonio looked at each other and share a mutual expression of awe and amusement. Antonio made a couple gestures that Voight interpreted as he was going to cut out for the night, Hank merely nodded in agreement. After Antonio was gone, Voight went over to the stand beside the bed and picked up Severide's phone. He scrolled through the photos on it until he came to all the ones Kelly had taken of Casey's injuries. Three months' worth of evidence. He deleted all of them. There was no longer any reason for them to exist. Instead he raised the phone in front of the sight of the two lieutenants in bed together, and took a picture. Then he took out his own phone, and snapped a matching picture, this would serve as a nice pick-me-up in days to come.

A/N: Only one chapter left!


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: Here we finally are at the last chapter. Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing, I hope you've enjoyed this story!

Voight was standing in the corridor a few doors up from Casey's hospital room, when he saw a familiar face heading his way.

"Dr. Charles."

"Sergeant Voight, I got your message."

"Thanks for coming," Hank saw the psychiatrist had to switch a bag he was carrying to his other hand to reach out and shake Voight's.

"How's Casey doing?"

"Docs say he's still not sleeping enough to be released, other than that fairly well," Hank answered.

"Well that's something anyway. Now, which room did you say Matt's in?"

"Right down there," Voight pointed to his room. "I'm hoping you can help him."

"I'll see what I can do," Dr. Charles told him.

"Thank you, Daniel."

Dr. Charles headed down the hall and popped his head in and saw Casey laying in the bed, presumably asleep, and he rapped on the door to get the lieutenant's attention.

"Matt."

Casey opened his eyes and tried to get them to focus. "Doctor Charles...my turn to get shrunk now?"

"Actually I just got done assisting a colleague here who needed a fresh set of eyes on his patient," Daniel told him as he entered the room. "How're you doing?"

Casey grumbled and shook his head. "Alright I guess...it still all seems so...surreal..." he sighed at the last word.

"What're the doctors saying?"

"They won't let me go home, until they're convinced I'm not going to fall down dead from exhaustion...what business of theirs it is I have no idea," Casey grumbled as he rubbed his eyes.

"Well I'm sure you can appreciate the liability they'd be responsible for if they discharged you and something went wrong on the next call you answered," Dr. Charles said.

"But I've been here almost a week, I'm fine...I'm...my ulcers are getting better, I want to go home. I can't sleep in this place anyway, noise all day and night, alarms going off, people screaming, people running up and down the hall, do you have any idea what it's like trying to sleep with all that?"

"Actually yeah, I've stayed overnight a few times to monitor some of my patients," Dr. Charles said.

"I'd be able to get more sleep if they just sent me home," Casey whined. "It's quiet there, it's familiar, I can relax."

"I can understand that...actually...do you mind if I show you something?"

"Sure," Casey leaned back against the pillows.

"This is something I've been trying with some of my patients who have trouble sleeping."

Casey watched as the psychiatrist reached into the shopping bag he was carrying, and pulled out...

"A teddy bear?"

Dr. Charles held the large pile of dirty off-white fur and said, "My daughter had one like this...got her through a lot of rough nights the first year after her mom and I divorced...of course at the time she insisted she was too old for stuffed animals...but it worked."

"And you...do this with...adult patients?"

"Oh yes," Daniel explained, "I've been trying it with some of my patients who can't sleep but they also can't take sleeping pills. Some of them are borderline obsessive compulsives and neurotics, they can't figure out what to do with their hands when they're in bed." At the look Casey gave him, he added, "Yeah, they actually lay awake nights trying to figure out what they're supposed to do with them, under the covers, over, lay at their sides, some of them tuck their hands under them until they lose the circulation, this supplies them a simple fix to their question."

Casey raised a questioning eyebrow as he asked, "And the others?"

"There are a variety of reasons why people can't sleep as well as they should...but I've been seeing fairly good results with this exercise with some of my adult patients as with kids who can't sleep. There's a lot of psychological mumbo jumbo theories about it, but I think in the end it boils down to," Dr. Charles held it out and before Casey even realized what he'd done, he took it, "People need a little comfort in their lives."

Casey turned the stuffed animal over and looked at it. It had two tiny shiny black eyes, plastic orbs, not flat buttons, it actually seemed to be looking at him. The mouth stitched on was a stoic one that looked more appropriate on a small breed of dog assessing a stranger.

"And you think this would help me?" Casey didn't sound convinced.

"I think it couldn't hurt to try," Dr. Charles told him, not drawing any attention to but also not oblivious to the fact Casey's hand was absently feeling the fur on the back of the bear's body, as if testing its softness. "Worst case scenario, nothing happens...but it's possible if the doctors start to notice an improvement in your sleep patterns, that they might release you sooner than expected."

Casey's eyes lit up a bit at that suggestion. He looked at the toy and contemplated his options. Finally he looked at the psychiatrist and said, "No offense, but it still sounds stupid to me."

"Understandable," Daniel replied.

"But..." Casey looked at it again, "if it _could_ get me out of here quicker...I guess I'd be willing to try it."

* * *

"I know it looks stupid," Casey explained to Severide when he stopped by the hospital room later, "but Dr. Charles seems to think it could actually help me, and at this rate I'm willing to try anything to get out of here."

Kelly had listened to the full story with no interruptions all the while seated on the foot of Casey's hospital bed. Finally he told the Truck lieutenant, "Hey, if it helps you sleep, more power to you. How're you feeling today?"

Casey sighed. "Better...I guess...listen, thanks for staying with me last night."

"I'm staying again tonight," Kelly told him.

"You don't have to..."

"I am anyway...look Casey, I'm sorry about the other day, I didn't mean to get you upset."

"It's alright...you all knew it was true, you knew it, Voight knew it...I think...I think the only reason he agreed to make her get those tests...was to buy time for me to finally admit that she...was in control of her actions the whole time. Gave me enough time to think about it without her presence or the added stress of it to interfere."

Kelly scooted up to the edge of the bed and put his arm around Casey, wordlessly offering his full support to his friend.

"I just didn't want to believe it was true," Matt told him.

Kelly nodded, "I know, buddy. Nobody wanted to believe it."

"Are you sure she's gone?" Casey asked.

"Yeah...I got it on good authority she packed her bags and signed up for some job in Puerto Rico, disaster relief paramedics or something like that...she's gone, her stuff's gone, the apartment's empty, trust me, she's gone."

Casey slowly nodded and got out a shaky, "Good." He looked at Severide and said, "Kelly...why didn't you tell me...that you knew?"

He sighed as he thought about the answer. "I didn't know how to bring it up, especially not in a way that you wouldn't automatically deny it."

"Probably right," Casey murmured as he absentmindedly gripped the teddy bear in one hand.

"And if that happened, and Gabby found out...what would she do then? I'd hoped that eventually you'd come to me, tell _me_ what was going on."

"What would you have done?" Casey asked.

"Kicked Gabby's ass for one," Kelly answered without missing a beat. Then in a softer tone he added, "I would've gotten you out of there."

"Instead you went to Voight."

"I figured it'd be better to bring in reinforcements," Kelly said. "That way, there'd be multiple witnesses, Gabby could never turn it around and say you were the one beating her."

Casey cracked a small smile and asked, "Is that the voice of experience?"

Kelly tried to stifle the smirk that broke through, "What can I say? I guess you get caught in enough 'he said-she said's over the years, you learn."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Casey admitted. "I just didn't think I could tell anyone..."

"I'm sorry I didn't do anything sooner," Kelly replied.

"You did enough," Casey avoided looking Severide in the eyes, "you went to Voight...honestly, I never would've thought of that...and not because of our history...he'd never believe me. _Nobody_ would ever believe me, but Voight, guy I knocked on his ass and tell him that my wife is hitting me and I can't leave her? He'd never take me seriously."

"Oh I don't know," Hank said as he entered the room, both lieutenants looked up at him and he added, "Try me sometime, you might just be surprised."

"Hey, Hank," Casey mumbled, absently pressing the teddy bear tighter against his chest.

"That's cute," Voight commented as he stepped into the room.

"Don't start," Kelly warned him.

"It's alright, Daniel ran the whole thing by me earlier," Hank said. "And speaking of which."

"Huh?" Casey looked at him.

"Doctor's orders, go-to-bed," Hank told him.

"Hank..."

"You want to get out of here, make the doctors happy, go to sleep," Voight's tone turned a shade more ominous as he added, waving a fist at Casey, "Or I'll knock you out myself."

The two lieutenants had a good laugh at that. Casey finally conceded and settled back against the bed and closed his eyes. Severide got off of the bed and stood up, Voight motioned for him to be quiet. They waited a few minutes, and watched Casey, after a short while his breathing became more even, relaxed, he rolled over onto his side and tightly hugged the teddy bear against his chest.

"Now that'd make a nice picture," Kelly said teasingly.

Voight grabbed the blanket and pulled it up and draped it over Casey, as far as anyone else was concerned, all they'd see was Casey curled on his side in a ball, looking oddly at peace.

"That ought to help his dignity," Voight commented. He motioned for Severide to follow him outside so they wouldn't wake him.

"He still doesn't want anyone from 51 to see him. He doesn't know they've been here."

"There's the irony," Voight said as they headed down the hall. "He wants to get out of here and go home, but as long as he stays here, he can make sure nobody comes to see him...soon as he's out those doors, bang, everybody's going to be lining up to see how he's doing."

"And he knows they already know what happened...they know what happened wasn't his fault..."

"But in his mind, they're still going to look at him and wonder how he could _let_ that puny woman beat the hell out of him," Voight said. "Despite everything that we know, those same fears still hold a lot of people."

Kelly looked at him and asked, "So what's the answer to that?"

Voight shrugged and shook his head, "Nothing, Casey has to brace himself for what he's scared to face, and face it...and when he does he'll realize it's not as bad as he thought. The trouble is just _getting_ to that point."

"Are you sure that Gabby got the message loud and clear?" Kelly asked.

Voight looked at him and pointed out, "You're the one that called everyone from 51 over here to line up their alibis for the night she was released...you _know_ I don't play around. She packed her bags, she got on a plane, she is out of the country. Oh...speaking of which..." Voight took two cards out of his pocket and gave them to Kelly, "You or Casey _ever_ see her, you even _think_ you see her...you call me, I'll handle it."

Kelly looked at the business card, he didn't even know what to say. He finally came up with, "Thanks, Hank."

"Listen, you breathe a word of this to anyone, I'll hunt you down and kill you in your sleep," Voight told him. In a more normal tone, he told Kelly, "I like Casey. Any guy got the balls to come after me the way he did when we met...gotta respect that. Of course you realize I could never let _him_ know that..."

Kelly laughed at that comment.

"But I like him," Voight continued. "And I hope he _does_ come away from this alright."

"So...if Casey _had_ come to you and told you what was going on..."

"Our professional relationship would take a _very_ uncomfortable turn," Voight said simply, and elaborated, "You had the pictures to prove the abuse, I would've had to strip search him myself."

That comment was so unexpected Kelly snorted hard enough to hurt his throat.

The hint of a smile cracked through Voight's stone face expression, but he recovered it as he told Severide, "If he'd come to me, asked me for my help, I'd have done it. But I understand why he couldn't. It's a bad situation, Kelly, no matter who it is, it's a bad situation, there's a reason why nobody ever wants to get involved."

Severide shook his head and replied, "I just couldn't do it, I couldn't stand by watching any longer."

"Good thing you didn't," Voight said. The air around that simple statement hung heavily for both of them.

"She really would've killed him, wouldn't she?" Kelly asked, as if only now being able to admit that horror to himself.

Voight wouldn't answer. He just squeezed Severide's shoulder reassuringly and told him, "Don't think about it. Just be glad we got him out when we did, and he's gonna be alright."

* * *

Casey heard the distant sound of footsteps, then he felt a presence, somebody in the room with him.

"Kelly?" he opened his eyes and sat up.

"Sorry, Matt, just me," Dr. Charles was in the doorway. "How's the experiment going?"

Casey turned his head and saw the teddy bear clutched in the crook of his arm, despite everything he felt a flush of heat rising in his cheeks.

"I don't know what it is, but I'll admit it's been easier to fall asleep the last couple days," Casey told him. "They're going to take me back to the sleep center tomorrow to run some more tests."

"Nervous?" Dr. Charles asked.

Casey shrugged. "Doctor Charles, there's something I've been wondering...but I'm not sure how to ask...what happens if when they release me and I can go home...what if...I mean what if I still need..." he couldn't finish the sentence but his eyes wandered to the off white pile of fur squeezed in the crook of his elbow.

Daniel caught on to what Matt was trying to say. "Can I let you in on a little secret, Matt?"

Casey shrugged.

"Nobody ever _really_ grows up...people are largely the same way they were as kids. Millions of people still cannot eat food that touches even after 30 years. Most of them evolved from having a nightlight to leaving the TV on all night so they're not alone in the dark. So, a discharged patient who still finds it easier to sleep with a teddy bear, there's nothing so unusual about that. Something else to consider, kids are a lot smarter than people give them credit for, they know what they want, but they also know what they need, more often than adults are willing to admit. Every kid who ever slept with a doll or a stuffed animal had their own time when they didn't need them anymore, and they all know when that time is...you'll know when the time's right too."

Casey slowly took that in, and nodded. "Thanks, Doctor Charles."

There was a pause, then Daniel said, "Matt, I know this is probably the last thing you want to hear but-"

"Let me guess, therapy."

"Everybody's least favorite subject," Dr. Charles said with a small smile.

Casey sighed, "It's hard enough talking about what happened with people I know...how do I explain it to a total stranger?"

"Well sometimes _not_ knowing the person makes it easier to open up, with no history between two people, there's less fear of being judged, scrutinized."

"All psychiatrists do is _look_ for problems in people," Casey replied.

"Not exactly, we take what they think is wrong with them, against our own findings after we're able to talk with them," Dr. Charles said.

Casey managed a cynical smile and asked, "What if I don't think there's anything wrong with me?"

"That's what everyone wants," Daniel said. "What about telling me?"

Casey raised an eyebrow. " _You_?"

"I'm not exactly a stranger, am I?"

"I guess not...I mean...I never thought about it."

"You don't have to decide right now, you can think about what you want to do," Daniel told him.

Casey looked at him, a trace of pain in his eyes, "Tell me something...how screwed up is it that I miss Gabby, that I still love her even after what she did?"

"It's not," Dr. Charles answered. "Whatever was going through Gabby's head all those years, you genuinely loved her, there's nothing wrong with that."

Casey's eyes shifted downward, not focusing on anything but just getting away from the psychiatrist's own gaze. He thought of something and reluctantly asked, "Voight show you the video?"

"Yes...he thought it would come in handy to determine all the facts in diagnosing Gabby."

Dr. Charles noted Casey absently clutching the bear tighter against his chest.

"I never stopped to wonder where the cops came from...I just thought somebody complained about the noise...I didn't know there was a video...I loved her so much I almost let her kill me. What the hell does that say about me? If it were some woman on a call and her husband did that to her..."

"It's always different seeing someone else go through your experiences," Daniel reminded him. "It's easier to make decisions for other people than ourselves."

Casey reluctantly nodded, then said, "That night, I really thought it was all over...I was going to walk out on her...I was convinced that I didn't love her anymore...now...I feel like I want her back."

"That's perfectly natural, Matt," Dr. Charles told him. "After you've had a while to adjust to being around the rest of your firehouse family, it'll gradually wear away. A part of her will always stay with you, but one day you'll be able to realize that you don't need her, and everything that was missing in your relationship will eventually be filled in by the people who actually care about you."

Casey groaned and said, "I know that they know by now...but how do I tell them about this?"

"Who says you have to tell them anything?" Dr. Charles asked.

"They're going to want to know...they're going to have questions, they'll want to know how this happened, how I _let_ it happen."

"Anybody who knows Gabby Dawson doesn't have to wonder how she does _anything_ she does," Kelly announced as he stepped into the room, "We've _all_ seen her in action over the years."

"Kelly!" Casey seemed shocked by the Squad lieutenant's sudden presence.

"How're you holding up, buddy?"

"I..."

"I was just passing through," Dr. Charles said as he turned towards the door, "I'll give you two some privacy."

"Why? What're we gonna do with it?" Severide asked sarcastically.

"What're you doing here?" Casey asked.

Kelly turned to him and answered, "I'm going to take you to the sleep center tomorrow, I'm staying for the night in the meantime. Move over."

"You and Voight," Casey grumbled as he shifted over to the rail so Kelly could slip in beside him. "It's unreal, all the people that actually have something wrong with them, and this hospital won't let me go because I'm not getting enough sleep."

"Well there's a reason for that," Kelly told him.

"What?"

"I overheard some of the nurses talking, a couple months back they got short staffed and the nurses had to pull double shifts all week long...one of them fell asleep driving once her shift was over and drove into a tree, dead on impact."

"God..."

"It was a hard blow for them...a fireman prematurely discharged for sleep deprivation from the same hospital, and something else happens...forget what the staff's thinking, do you know what the press would do with a story like that? So of course right now they're taking extra precautions. That's why they have one of the docs from the center come here to check people out from time to time, apparently the staff included."

"Kelly...what _do_ I tell the others when I get out of here?" Matt asked.

"Not a damn thing," Severide answered. "You might as well know...Voight showed the video to _everybody_ , after that it was pretty much no questions asked."

"Oh God," Casey groaned as he lowered his head to his chest.

"It's alright, Casey, they know what's been going on, nobody is going to bother you."

"I guess that's something," he grumbled. Then he thought of something. "Who's replaced her?"

"They sent us a guy this time...you'll meet him soon enough," Kelly said.

"And when _he_ starts asking about the medic he replaced?" Casey asked.

"We'll deal with it, don't worry."

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry about everything."

"You didn't do anything," Kelly pointed out.

"I'm sorry you all got dragged into this...I'm sorry I didn't tell you..."

"It's alright," Severide pulled Casey against him and patted his back, "I understand, Casey."

Matt continued to murmur apologies as he pressed his head into Kelly's shoulder. Severide put his other arm around Casey and hugged his friend and let him get out what he felt he needed to say, and after a while, they both fell asleep.

* * *

Casey turned on his side in his sleep and pressed his cheek against the teddy bear's fur covered face and murmured, "Move over, Kelly."

Severide grinned as he reached over the bed rail and shook his friend. "Wake up, Casey."

"Hmm?" Casey opened his eyes and saw Kelly standing over him, then he looked beside him and his eyes widened. "Oh."

Kelly laughed and told him, "Come up, get up, I stopped by your place and got you a change of clothes."

"Oh thank God," Casey took the bag from him, "you have no idea how sick I am of this gown."

"Oh but you look so cute in it."

"Cut it out," Casey said as he took the bag into the bathroom to get dressed.

Severide went over to the door and put his ear against it. "Besides, they figured it'd be harder for you to try sneaking out in it. Can I ask you a question?"

"What?"

"Sleeping with Voight..."

"Don't start," Casey said warningly.

"It was just...surprising."

"Try it from my end," Casey called from the other side of the door.

"...What was that like?" Kelly asked.

The door opened and he saw Casey in a pair of jeans wrangling a shirt over his head. Some of the black and yellowed bruises on his ribs and abdomen were visible before he got it on right. "You're sick, you know that, Severide?"

"Come on, Casey."

"Okay since you brought it up, kind of like sleeping with you, except not as soft," Casey said cynically.

"Very funny."

Whatever Kelly was about to say after that was cut off by Casey grabbing him by the shoulders and kissing him on the mouth. Now it was Severide's turn to stare wide eyed when Matt finally pulled away.

"How do you like it?" he asked, maintaining a straight face.

Kelly recovered from his shock and tried to laugh at it. "I get it, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that."

"Actually...it was kind of nice," Casey admitted, before Kelly had a chance to think too much about that, Casey explained, "it was nice to know that everything you did, you did because you're my best friend-"

"I love you," Kelly told him. In light of everything that had happened, he needed to make sure for his own peace of mind that Casey knew that.

Casey might not have been expecting that, but without missing a beat he continued, "And you have no idea what that means to me." He hugged Kelly and told him, "You have _no_ idea...I was worried once you knew what was going on...that you'd hate me."

"Matt," Kelly put his arms around Casey and returned the embrace, "I could never hate you, you should know that by now."

"This was different," Casey said, the self consciousness evident in his tone.

"I know," Kelly said quietly, "but I still could never hate you."

Casey breathed in heavily and replied, "Thank you."

"Is this one okay?" Kelly raised his head and kissed Casey on the forehead.

Casey laughed and elbowed him in the ribs. "Yeah, it's fine."

Severide saw Casey's eyes starting to well up with tears, he tightened his grip on Kelly and told him, his voice threatening to break, "I love you too...I'm sorry..."

"Casey, you don't have anything to apologize for," Kelly told him.

"I'm sorry that I let this whole mess get between us," Casey said. "I...I guess I knew, the times you came around and I bailed all the time...I should've put it together then that you knew...I just thought I'd been able to hide what was going on from everyone."

"Don't worry about it, buddy, it's over now...Gabby's gone, she's not coming back...we've got plenty of time to catch up on everything now. Casey, none of this is on you."

"I know," he said reluctantly, "I know, but I still feel like it's my fault this all happened. Why didn't I walk out the first time...why didn't I leave when she hit me again? When I _knew_ it wasn't going to stop, why didn't I do anything?"

Kelly tightened his grip on Casey and responded, "Because you are a very trusting person and always try to see the good in everyone...how could you know what she was really like when she'd hidden it from all of us for all those years?"

"I feel like an idiot."

"Matt, you're a _survivor_."

Casey grimaced. "Don't ever call me that."

"It's true."

"I don't care, I don't like it."

Kelly wouldn't fight him on it. "Okay."

He pulled back and looked at Casey and saw that two stray tears had broken loose and started to roll down his face. Kelly placed his hands on the side of Matt's head and wiped them away with his thumbs and said, "Come on, let's go get something to eat."

* * *

"Finally!" Casey exclaimed as he charged through the automatic doors at Med and ran for Severide's Mustang.

Kelly followed behind him carrying the discharge papers. "Yeah but remember the doc said you still have to get more sleep than usual if you're going to fully recover."

"Yeah-yeah-yeah," Casey said dismissively as he slipped into the passenger seat.

Kelly got in and closed his door. He paused, and looked over at Matt and asked him, "You sure about this?"

Matt turned to him and said simply, "Take me home."

"You know if you want, you can stay at my place for a while."

Casey leaned over and said slowly for emphasis, "Ho-om-m-me."

Kelly nodded. "Okay."

They drove along in silence for a few minutes before Kelly asked, "You want to talk?"

Casey shook his head and looked out the window.

After a while, they pulled up outside Casey's apartment.

"You're sure about this?" Kelly asked.

Casey nodded as he reached for his door, "Yep."

They got out of the car and headed up to the door, Casey took out his key and undid the lock.

It had been a while since Kelly had actually been in for a visit, but even he could tell the place looked different.

"What the..."

"The guys from 51 thought it'd be easier to adjust if they moved some stuff around...took some stuff out...just so it wasn't too familiar...I can help you move it back if you want."

Casey slowly looked around the apartment and realized that what was missing was all the stuff that Gabby had bought. The furniture that remained had been shuffled around the room, nothing was in the same place it was before.

"No...no," he shook his head, "it's fine."

Casey crossed over to the couch and threw himself against the cushions and said with a tired groan, "Just so good to be home again."

"You want me to take that?" Kelly pointed to Casey's bag he had in hand.

"No, I'll get it put away in a minute," he said as he sprawled out on the couch, "so glad to be out of that hospital bed."

"How about a beer?" Kelly asked.

"Now you're talking."

Severide headed into the kitchen, dug through the fridge and found a sixpack buried on the bottom shelf. He took out two bottles and headed back to the living room, and stopped.

Casey was in a dead sleep on the couch hugging his bag against his chest. And Kelly knew why. It hadn't exactly been a secret but Casey hadn't been too open about the fact he was bringing the teddy bear home with him to see how Dr. Charles' experiment panned out.

Kelly almost laughed. Casey even had a hint of a smile on his face as he slowly inhaled and exhaled in his sleep.

"Welcome home, buddy," Kelly whispered as he leaned down and kissed Casey on the crown of his head.

* * *

Kelly knocked on the door and anxiously waited. He heard footsteps coming to the door, and Casey answered.

"Hey, ready to go?"

"Yeah, where's my ticket?" Casey asked.

"That's what I like about you, so trusting," Kelly laughed as he handed one of his tickets to that night's Blackhawks game over to the Truck lieutenant.

"Trust, but verify," Casey looked at the ticket to confirm the information.

"So how's it been going?" Severide asked as they headed to his car.

"Eh...still can't get used to talking to Dr. Charles about everything that was going on...but I can think of worse things to do."

"You look good," Kelly observed. "What'd that sleep doctor say?"

"Said that debt's about caught up."

"Well sleeping 10 hours a night 4 times a week for 2 months, I'd hope so."

"I _feel_ better," Casey mentioned as they got in the car.

"That's great."

"I feel _alive_ for the first time in months," Casey said.

"That's better," Kelly replied.

"I wanted to tell you...thanks," Casey looked at him, "for everything you did."

Kelly smiled at him and responded, "Don't mention it. Let's get to the game."


End file.
